Kill Four

by Blake Banner

  “You were spying!”

  “I had nothing better to do. I need you to come and play cribbage with me at night, or snap, to keep my mind off my exotic neighbors.”

  “Cribbage? Doctor might be more fun.”

  “That could work too.”

  She yanked the cord on the small motor, it growled into life and we started putt-putting back toward the beach.

  “So, what kind of guy is Ruudy van Dreiver? Does he come to the resort ever, or does he keep to himself?”

  “I don’t think he has ever come here. His guests come over sometimes. It’s not the first time Ameya Dabir has dined here.” She hesitated a moment and grinned.

  I grinned back. “What?”

  “He has rented a yacht for this afternoon…”

  “He who? Van Dreiver?”

  “Prince Awad.”

  I concealed my interest by asking an irrelevant question. “You rent yachts?”

  “We have an office at the Moorings, by the Heads. We have powerboats and a few sailing yachts, which we rent by the day. Of course he might be taking a whole party out, but judging by the champagne and caviar he’s ordered, my money is on him just having one guest on that yacht.” She laughed. “See? You’ve got me gossiping like you now!”

  I laughed and thought for a moment. “These waters not dangerous for sailing?”

  “They can be, at that! But they won’t go out far, mile or two off the heads, I’d guess.” She smiled and winked. “I’m pretty sure they’ll have other things on their mind besides sailing.”

  “Hmmm…” I grinned. “No doubt they’ll be playing high-stakes cribbage.”

  We got back to shore, I helped her put the stuff away, thanked her for a great morning and told her I’d like to do it again sometime. She gave me that curious look of hers and said, “So what are you going to do now, Mr. Richard Sinclair?”

  I shrugged. “I might go into George and buy some slightly more respectable clothes.”

  “Answer me a question.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where are your clothes?”

  I laughed out loud, like the whole thing was a crazy, amusing story and a whole lot of fun. “Somewhere between Thailand and London, actually. I’ve just spent a couple of months in Thailand. I was flying back to London and got sidetracked when a friend told me I really had to go and visit Knysna. So I changed my flight and detoured to Cape Town, but my luggage never got the memo.”

  She gave a lopsided smile and shook her head. “I’m surprised you don’t choke on the methane.”

  I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head to one side in a silent question.

  She nodded. “The methane released from all the bullshit you spout.”

  I made an effort to look hurt. “That’s a little unkind.”

  She stepped toward me and placed a damp hand on my chest. “I am not often wrong, Mr. Richard Sinclair, and I can tell you are actually an honest man, but I can also tell you are generating enough bullshit to fertilize the Sahara. I don’t appreciate being lied to or being made a sap of, so let’s call a truce. Stop flirting with me until you’re prepared to be up front and honest with me. If, when you’re done bullshitting, you still want to flirt with me, let me know, because I like you. Deal?”

  I nodded. “Deal.”

  She made her way back to reception and I sprinted up to my cabin, had a quick shower, dressed and made my way to my car in the parking lot. All the while, my mind was racing. I was thinking about the fishing boats I had seen on the beach at the village of Goukamma, six miles west of Knysna on the way in from George. I was thinking of Prince Mohamed bin Awad and Ameya Dabir last night, and wondering how much of a leap of faith it was to assume they would be alone on the yacht this afternoon. My gut told me it was no leap of faith at all.

  But I was also thinking that maybe the only person who could tell me for sure—about that and about van Dreiver’s affairs in general—was Janine, and I had blown her as a source of information by coming on too strong. On the other hand, I didn’t think I could have played it any other way with the timetable I had.

  I climbed into the Audi, slammed the door and pulled out of the Dylan Thomas parking lot. I drove fast to George. There I left the car in a public parking lot, took thirty grand out in South African rand—just over two thousand bucks—and bought some clothes, a mask, a snorkel and some flippers. I also bought some bread, cheese, ham and mineral water, and headed back toward Knysna at a steady fifty MPH. Before I got there, I turned off the N2 and onto a dirt track that wound down to the coast, and the village of Goukamma, the village I had spotted from the road when I had first arrived.

  Goukamma was tiny, little more than a cluster of small pink, blue and yellow wooden houses on the beach, surrounded by vast fishing nets suspended from tall, angular posts buried in the sand. Among those nets, drawn up away from the tide, were maybe a dozen boats, painted in faded reds, yellows and blues, each with a mast, a set of oars and an outboard motor attached at the back.

  I climbed out of the Audi, opened the trunk and took a few moments to prepare a bag. In it I put my new swimming gear, my lunch and my Sig p226, sealed in a plastic bag. When I was satisfied I had everything I needed, I walked down into the village.

  There was a handful of men, women and children standing and sitting around, not doing much, but my eye was caught by a guy in one of the boats. He was long and lanky, anything between thirty and sixty years old, and he was sewing a net. He grinned as I approached and showed me what was left of most of his teeth. I smiled back at him.

  “Good morning. I’d like to rent your boat for the afternoon.”

  He screwed up his brow like he didn’t understand, then he screwed up his nose like I was crazy and then he opened his mouth and wheezed among his tombstones.

  “You want my boat. What for, man?”

  I improvised. “I’m a travel writer. I write for TV and magazines, you know the kind of stuff, and I want to write about what it’s like to go out on the Indian Ocean in a wooden boat.”

  He shook his head, laughing, and returned to stitching his net. “Crazy. Crazy people.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You gonna sink mah boat. I don’t want you to sink mah boat, man.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m real good with boats. But look, I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll pay you five grand, up front, and if I do sink it, I guarantee I’ll buy you another.”

  Now he screwed up his eyes and did some more wheezing. “You not gonna buy me a boat if you been eaten by the sharks, man!”

  I pulled out the equivalent of five hundred dollars from my wallet, about seven grand in South African currency. He stopped sewing and regarded the money with interest and a little apprehension. I said, “I just want it for a few hours. The weather is good, the sea is calm, and I’ll be back before nightfall. I’m not going out more than a mile or two, max.”

  “And you gonna write TV about that?” He shook his head again, but after a moment he shrugged, dropped the net and slid down to the sand.

  “You know how to sail it?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty good.”

  He held out both hands. “Gimme the money.” I handed it to him. “OK, you can take the boat now. Come back before dark. Weather can change fast.”

  I gave him the thumbs up. “Help me get it in the water, will you?”

  Between us, we pushed it down the beach and into the ocean. He watched me swing aboard and stood scratching his head with one hand and his ass with the other while I inspected the engine. “You don’t want me come you? There a lot of sharks out there.”

  “I’ll be OK. I’m not going swimming. I’ll have her back here before nightfall. Don’t you worry.”

  He wheezed a laugh. “Your funeral at sea, man.”

  I pulled the cord, the engine fired up, I gave the guy another thumbs up, turned her around and started out on a southeasterly heading toward the headland that concealed Buffels Bay.

  The boat was
slow and the current was against me, so it was gone one PM and the sun was high by the time I reached the cliffs that marked the easternmost point of the bay. There I killed the engine, dropped the anchor and settled to a light lunch of bread, cheese and water.

  The yacht emerged from the mouth of the lagoon about two hours later, at three in the afternoon. I started up the engine again and began puttering in a direction slightly south of east, toward where I guessed they were going to drop anchor and start drinking champagne.

  As it was, they went farther than I had expected. They were cruising at about six knots, taking it easy, and they kept going for almost an hour. So by the time they stopped and dropped anchor, though the coast was still visible to them, they were largely invisible to anyone on shore. I figured that was no accident.

  I kept going until there was no more than a mile between us, then I killed the engine and raised the sail. With the gentle southerly breeze, I was making about three knots, but having to take, and after another twenty minutes, I was less than half a mile from the yacht. Then I let her drift a little closer, lowered the sail and dropped the anchor. I wasn’t surprised to see nobody on deck. I was pretty sure they hadn’t come out here to gaze at the ocean. I slipped my waterproofed Sig into my waistband, pulled on my flippers, mask and snorkel and slipped quietly overboard, trying not to think of the abundant sharks.

  The weather was good and the sea was calm, so I made it to the yacht in slightly over ten minutes. Aside from the lapping of the water on the hull, it was completely silent. I kicked my way from the starboard side to the stern, where there was a small diving platform with a couple of steps up to the rear deck, and pulled off my flippers and snorkel. I laid them on the platform, pulled myself gently out of the water and took the Sig from its packaging.

  I waited for sixty seconds, motionless, listening. Still there was no sound but the lapping of the small waves against the hull. I took the two steps up to the rear deck. There I saw a table, two chairs beside it, a silver bucket with ice and a half empty bottle of Dom Perignon, no glasses.

  Beyond the table, there was an open door and some steps going down into a spacious cabin. I stepped to the side of the door and peered in: a couple of sofas, another, longer table to one side and, at the end, steps rising to a sophisticated cockpit. Beneath and behind the steps, there was a highly polished mahogany door. Again I listened, again nothing.

  I slid down the steps, looked behind me, left and right, and crossed the main cabin to the door. I took hold of the handle, counted to two, turned and pushed.

  There was a bed directly ahead of me. The sheets were purple satin, rumpled and half on the floor. On either side of the bed, there were twin bedside tables in the same, high-polish mahogany. Each held a lamp and a half-empty crystal flute of champagne. Beside the sheets on the floor: a pair of cream chinos, gray socks, a pair of blue deck shoes, a pale blue shirt, a sari, a black lace bra, black lace panties, a pair of havaianas.

  In the bed, tangled in each other’s arms and legs among the purple satin sheets, two dark, naked bodies slept, partly covered by her long, black hair: bin Awad and Ameya Dabir. A twist of something like grief and despair clenched my gut, a certainty that what I was doing was wrong on a fundamental level. But I told myself I had no choice. This was a job that had to be done, and if my soul was to be damned for doing it, that would make no great difference. I was damned already. I spoke and my voice was loud and jarring in the confined room.

  “Wake up! Awad! Ameya Dabir! Wake up!”

  He raised his head, frowned, rubbed his face and his tightly curled hair. She frowned too, but opened her eyes and turned to face me, pulling the purple sheet over her bare breasts.

  “What the hell…?” Her voice, her accent, were both exquisite.

  Now bin Awad was on one elbow, his bare feet seeking the edge of the bed. He echoed his lover and said, “What the hell…?”

  I cocked the Sig and showed him the muzzle. “Enough questions. Get up.”

  They sat up. She gathered the sheets around her. They both looked more mad than scared. That would change.

  He said: “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I’m the man you’re trying to kill. I need you out of bed in three. If you aren’t, I’ll blow your kneecap off. Then your lover will have to carry you.” I aimed at his knee. “One, two…”

  “Wait! Wait, wait…” They were both climbing out of bed, standing. She was dragging the sheet with her.

  I said: “Leave the sheet. Put a bikini on if you want to.”

  She hesitated, then dropped the sheet. Her body, like her voice, was exquisite. “I didn’t bring a bikini…”

  I ignored her. “I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to negotiate. But understand me, push me half an inch and I will execute you both, like Timmerman, like El Vampiro, like all the rest. Do we understand each other?”

  They both nodded. I waved my gun and backed up a few feet. “Up on deck.”

  They crossed the saloon, naked and vulnerable. I felt sick and followed them up the steps to the rear deck. There they stood watching me, now more scared than mad. I waved the Sig at the chairs. “Sit.” They sat. “Where’s the scuba diving equipment?”

  He pointed at the wooden boards. “In the hatch.”

  “Open it.” He stood, then squatted down and opened the hatch. “Take out two weight belts. Put one on, give the other to Dabir.”

  He stared up at me and now there was real terror in his face. “What are you going to do?”

  “I told you. I have no interest in killing you. Do as I say and you have nothing to worry about.” I waved the Sig at the two belts with their lead weights. “That’s to strengthen my negotiating position. Now do it.”

  He pulled out two belts, handed one to Ameya Dabir and put the other around his waist. I looked at her, but couldn’t meet her eye. “Stand up, put it on, then both of you go and stand on the platform.”

  He shook his head. “Now look, anything you want, just please, don’t…”

  “I won’t warn you again. Do it.”

  She put on the belt and they both went and stood on the platform, facing me with their backs to the sea. He drew breath to speak, but she cut him short. Her black eyes narrowed and she spat the words at me. “You want to negotiate? Here’s the deal, Mr. Walker! You let us live and your death will last only a day instead of a week, and I promise not to skin you alive and cover you in salt! A deal?” She laughed. “You are nothing! What can you offer Omega? You think you have hurt us? You think you have made one single move that we did not dictate or anticipate? You are a piece of pig shit, Lacklan Walker, just as your father always knew you were. Go away and die, and save us all the annoyance of having to kill you, and yourself the agony of your miserable, lingering death!”

  I sat in the chair she had been sitting in. I felt cold inside, as though my soul were an infinite sheet of ice under a cloudless, frozen sky. “Tell me something, Ameya, is that how you justify the murder of eight billion people? You just think of them as pig shit?”

  She carefully and elaborately spat on the deck at my feet. “Little boys sob, Mr. Walker, while men get the job done.”

  In the silence that followed, the ocean slapped and sucked at the creamy white boat. There were no seagulls, no sounds at all but that eternal sound of the ocean; and then the stark, firecracker smack of the Sig. One round smacked through her perfect brow and erupted out of the back of her head, spraying blood and gore onto the dark surface of the sea. As she dropped into the waves, the second round punched in through his left eye and he went down too. Their bodies drifted down into the blackness and were quickly lost to view.

  Soon there would be sharks, and nothing left of Tau and Sigma but shark shit. Not pig shit like me, but shark shit. I couldn’t swim back, not with the sharks congregating to eat the Arab prince and the Brahmin princess. So I raised the anchor and fired up the engine and headed at a slow chug for the fishing boat.

  In the west, the sun was tur
ning copper and sinking toward the horizon.

  TEN

  By the time I got back to Knysna, it was almost six PM. I took a bottle of Bushmills to my cabin, knocked back two stiff shots and stood under the shower for twenty minutes, switching from scalding hot to cold and back again, trying to wash away the image of Ameya Dabir’s startled face rocking back as the slug crashed through her forehead.

  I toweled myself dry, took another slug of Irish, dressed in the new clothes I’d bought and made my way to reception. Janine saw me walk in and arched an eyebrow at me.

  “Good evening, Mr. Richard Sinclair.”

  I gave a smile that wasn’t a smile because my eyes were not involved and dropped the Hugh Grant accent.

  “That’s not my name.”

  “More BS?”

  “Give me a chance, will you? My name is Lacklan, and I’m from Boston. Will you let me buy you dinner and come clean?”

  I watched her eyes flick around my face. Her pupils dilated slightly and she smiled. “My goodness. I do believe Mr. Richard Sinclair is telling the truth. How could I refuse?”

  I engaged my eyes in the smile and said, “Cut it out. When shall I pick you up?”

  “Why waste time? Let’s strike while the iron is hot.” She leaned through a door in the wall behind the desk and said, “Clem? I’m going out for the evening. Man the desk, will you? If you need help, call Isabella.”

  A muffled voice replied. She picked up her purse and walked around the desk to join me, grabbed my arm and guided me toward the door. “This is going to be good,” she said, and squeezed my bicep.

  She took me on a walk through a maze of twisting paths that threaded their way among pinewoods and luxury villas, until we came to a short road that bordered the lagoon, just a short distance from the mouth, where the water was a deep green among rocks during the day, an almost black in the failing light of the evening. All the way, she had her arm linked through mine and kept up a gentle chatter about everything and anything, from the oyster beds in the lagoon to nearby ostrich farms and the crocodiles at the George Crocodile Park.