Vengeful: A Conspiracy Crime Thriller (The Gabriel Series Book 3)

by David Hickson

  We were riding a small dinghy that we had taken from the club’s main wharf, where sailors of yachts at anchor left them tied with a slip knot to a bollard when they came ashore. I turned the dinghy and started heading towards the FCD truck as if we were intending to get involved in the offloading process.

  It didn’t take them long to notice us. A soldier pointed and called out to his comrades, one of whom stepped up to the edge of the quay and shouted something. We kept approaching and the pointing soldier raised his weapon to get our attention.

  “Hold it here,” said Chandler, and I cut the motor.

  We drifted closer to the quay and I could hear some words from the soldier shouting at us. “Private!” he called several times in more than one language. “Keep away!”

  Our momentum died, and we bobbed up and down a stone’s throw from the quay’s edge. The shouting soldier turned to the one waving his gun, who stopped waving, turned smartly on his heels and disappeared from our view towards the Dark Maiden.

  “Looks like that’s done it,” said Chandler. “Back out a little, we don’t want them testing the range on their AKs.”

  I engaged the motor again, and we backed away slowly. The soldier that had been shouting at us watched in confused silence. Others had joined him, and they raised their weapons in case they needed to open fire. Then the spherical form of Lebogang appeared in the company of two soldiers on an upper deck of the yacht. They gestured at us, and Lebogang stood absolutely still for a moment.

  “Now,” said Chandler, and I swung the boat about and headed to the berth we had agreed upon at the far end of an adjacent jetty. As we passed out of sight of Lebogang, we heard him utter a bellowing command that sent a burst of energy through the soldiers on the dockside. They turned and started sprinting down the quay.

  Chandler and I leapt onto the jetty, leaving Robyn to moor the dinghy, and the two of us jogged along our hastily planned route, giving the soldiers a tantalising glimpse of us before we disappeared into a cluster of yachts mounted on rusted supports like a junkyard of crippled boats.

  We split up when we reached cover, and I took a moment to catch my breath beneath an old fifty-foot sloop with a broken mast. The sounds of the soldiers’ boots announced their arrival and expressed their confusion as they faced the labyrinth of broken yachts, oil drums, pipes, and other junk. A moment later they spread out to form a line, as one would to search open ground. But this was not open ground, and they assumed we had fled as far as we could into the chaotic jumble of the yard, instead of remaining in the exposed outskirts. Chandler and I had planned a simple pincer move on a narrow track that ran between a low shed and a thirty-foot catamaran to the side of the yard. I heard a clattering as Chandler threw something against the shed to attract attention and saw a soldier gesture to a colleague to move towards the sound. The two of them were on the edge of the line, which kept moving onward, leaving them dangling behind. They found the entrance to the narrow path and hesitated. For a moment it looked as if both of them were going to enter the blind passage, but their training won out, and one of them stayed at the entrance with his gun raised, covering the other.

  The rest of the soldiers moved ahead, intending to surround us and contain us in the area, which would have been a good plan if we had moved deeper into the yard. But they left us, and the two soldiers we had distracted, outside the ring they were forming. I crept silently around my yacht and approached from behind the soldier at the entrance to the path. He was scanning back and forth with the nervous movements of a man whose training hasn’t covered the impact of adrenalin. His focus was on the one thing he understood – his comrade moving down the narrow path ahead of him, so he didn’t notice my approach.

  I waited a beat to give the other soldier time to reach nearer to where Chandler was waiting, then I made a scuffling noise and immediately stopped moving and raised my arms before he’d even noticed me. He swung about sharply at the sound, and the surprise caused him to jerk his AK-47 upwards, but he didn’t squeeze the trigger. I stood quite still, a few metres from him, my arms raised.

  He called out with a voice cracked by tension and a minute later two other soldiers arrived, breathing hard, their weapons up, fingers twitching on the triggers. I kept still as the new arrivals grabbed at my elbows and brought my hands behind me. One of them used zip-ties to bind my hands, the other patted me down and found the empty holster. That didn’t seem to surprise him. They turned me about roughly, then pushed me ahead of them towards the Nkwenya wharf and the Dark Maiden. The remaining soldiers were calling out aloud to one another now. Having caught one of us they had abandoned all stealth, and sounded confident they would trap Chandler, despite all the noise they were making. Their shouts faded as we moved away from the scrapyard, my escorts breathing heavily under the weight of their full kit.

  It was a slow walk back to the Nkwenya wharf, picking our way over the pipes and potholes. As we approached the Dark Maiden, there came a triumphant call from behind us and my escorts stopped me with the butt of an AK-47 in my chest. I stared ahead as the soldiers who had called out joined us with an excited babble of conversation. Then I turned to see Robyn, her hands behind her back, escorted by three Dark Bizness soldiers. She didn’t look at me, but kept her eyes on the ground before her as if all the fighting spirit had gone.

  “Just one of you left,” jeered a soldier, and he prodded me with his AK-47, pushing me on towards the Dark Maiden.

  Twenty-Eight

  We climbed the stairs of the gangway into the Dark Maiden, where our escorts engaged in a heated debate about which of them would have the honour of presenting us to their leader. Robyn kept her eyes down and I feigned disinterest as I took in the splendour of the Dark Maiden, which felt more like a five-star hotel than a yacht. Nautically themed artworks lined the bulkheads, recessed lighting filled in for the inadequate winter sun leaking through the portholes, and the pale oak decking looked freshly polished. The movement of the boat in the water was barely noticeable. There was an inaudible murmur and hardly detectable tremor under our feet from the distant engines. Eventually three of the soldiers were chosen to present us to the big boss, including a mute one who had arrived with Robyn and had somehow attached the rope that bound her hands to the webbing of his uniform, which he demonstrated with a silent mime. The others turned back to join their colleagues in the search for Chandler, and the winning escorts used their boots to push us ahead of them along the passageway and up a flight of spiral stairs.

  The stateroom on the second level of the Dark Maiden had a deep-pile carpet with a pattern that started out by replicating the oak decking, then twisted in a fantasy of lines that swirled across one another in a rush to get past the low couches, card tables with Jacobsen Swan chairs, and bulbous columns of glowing translucent glass, to reach the far end of the room where a full-wall aquarium was filled with bright tropical fish and exotic coral.

  Lebogang Madikwe was standing before the aquarium, his back to us, his head tilted up as if he was admiring the fish. It looked like a pose designed to express his indifference to our presence, which he did not acknowledge. He stood in this manner for several minutes, and the five of us waited patiently, Robyn, myself and our three guards. One soldier, unaware of the subtleties of Lebogang’s body language, gave a soft cough. Lebogang’s head twitched with irritation.

  “Never underestimate the allure of gold,” he announced to the fish tank as if he was about to embark upon a lecture on the subject. Then after a long pause, during which there was no response to his announcement, he added, “They say that, don’t they?”

  The silence extended. We were probably all wondering who Lebogang expected to answer his question. And so I did, with a question of my own.

  “Do they?” I said. “I thought it was the evil of gold we need to be careful of underestimating.”

  Lebogang turned to face me, a look of amusement on his round face.

  “I told that old man to run and hide,” he said. “But you
couldn’t resist coming back for the gold, could you? Couldn’t resist its allure.”

  He looked from me to Robyn with smug satisfaction. “It will be the death of you, that shiny metal, you realise that? You will all die because of it.”

  Robyn said nothing. She kept staring at the carpet.

  “What were you hoping to do?” asked Lebogang with a false laugh. “Jump on the boat and stow away with the gold?”

  He gave another laugh and there ensued a heavy silence.

  “Well?” he demanded of Robyn.

  She finally looked up at him.

  “They also say,” she said, her voice hoarse with exhaustion, or perhaps despair. “That you should never underestimate your enemies.”

  Lebogang opened his mouth with mock surprise.

  “Oh … have I underestimated you? Should I have expected more of you? Should I have sent more of my men to chase after you? Taken greater precautions to prevent you from taking my gold from me? Oh, but wait …” He gave a sneering laugh. “You didn’t take my gold, did you?”

  “Or perhaps we did,” said Robyn. “And you should have realised that we did not come back for the gold.”

  Lebogang opened his mouth and produced a great rumbling laugh.

  “But you haven’t taken it! What are you babbling on about? If you didn’t come back for the gold, then what were you doing floating about on that little boat?”

  “We came for our friend.”

  “What nonsense,” he said. But he didn’t manage another laugh, and I thought I detected the stirring of some uncertainty behind his brave facade. “Your friend is with me now. Didn’t the old man tell you? Us Xhosa people, we stick together.”

  “In which case,” I said. “I am sure he has told you that those boxes your men are loading onto that boat don’t contain any gold.”

  Lebogang swivelled his small eyes onto me and considered me with scorn. But the glimmer of uncertainty grew into doubt, and it spread across his face. He couldn’t hide it from us. He reached into the pocket of his silk jacket, which could have been the inspiration for the imitation suit Fat-Boy had been wearing, and pulled out a small mobile phone, pressed a button and said something to the phone, keeping his eyes on me. We heard the faint buzzing of a call being connected, then a click and a deep grunt. Lebogang spoke a few musical words, then ended the call.

  We stood in silence for several minutes. Lebogang glared at me as if he was trying to read my mind. A soldier behind us shifted his weight and his boots squeaked.

  Then the door behind us burst open with a bang. Heavy boots stamped across the carpet, as if they were a new pair of boots being worn in. The bearer of the boots gave us a wide berth and came to a halt beside Lebogang. It was the cousin, Justice Mkwekwe, the family resemblance clear in his facial features, but Justice was of lesser girth, and clearly fancied himself as having a military bearing. He was wearing the green fatigues of the Dark Bizness militia with three stars on the epaulets, and carried an AK-47 over his shoulder.

  He spoke rapidly in Xhosa to Lebogang, his deep voice resonant but filled with anxious urgency. Lebogang asked a question in disbelief, gave us a confused glance, and Justice provided what sounded like a definitive, if angry, answer. Then Lebogang turned to me. There was surprise and anger scrawled across his face now.

  “Plaster?” he demanded. “And lead? You replaced my gold with lumps of lead?”

  “Bring our friend to us,” I said. “And we’ll tell you where the gold is.”

  “Do you really think you’re going to walk off this ship?” Lebogang’s voice climbed a tone or two.

  “If you want to see the gold again,” I said. “That is exactly what we will do.”

  “But I have a better idea,” declared Lebogang, his anger rising quickly. “I’ll cut your limbs off one at a time and let’s see who breaks first.” He swung round to his cousin and shouted at him, “Fetch the fat one!”

  Justice hesitated only a moment, then swivelled on his shiny new boots and stamped his way out of the room. We stood in silence again. The restless soldier shifted his weight back onto the other foot, and his boot squeaked again. The coughing soldier coughed. Only the mute one who had tied himself to Robyn was completely silent and still.

  There was something bothering me. I watched Lebogang, but his eyes avoided mine and they settled on Robyn. Something about the angry outburst bothered me. There had been a sense of drama to it, as if Lebogang was playing some lines for us, but laughing on the inside. Then, as I watched him look at Robyn, he gave the glimmer of a smile. It was a strange gloating smile, as if he’d just thought of something nasty he could do to her. It took me a moment to work out why it troubled me, but then I realised – his burst of anger had been forced. There was no genuine anger, but a surprised amusement that he had covered with the pretence of anger. And this smile was the smile of a man who was about to get away with something. It was not the smile of a man who has just discovered he has lost tens of millions of dollars.

  The door opened again, and the stamping steps of the cousin were accompanied by the sound of feet shuffling across the soft carpet. Fat-Boy’s hands were tied behind him, and his legs were bound to hobble him. His head was covered with something that looked like a pillowcase, blotched with patches of blood and held with a drawstring through Fat-Boy’s mouth, presumably to gag him.

  Lebogang gave a curt order. Justice loosened the drawstring, pulled the pillowcase off Fat-Boy’s head like he was revealing a surprise, then tossed it to the floor. He said something to Lebogang, as if he was announcing Fat-Boy’s arrival at our little gathering. Then he swivelled about and stamped out of the room again.

  Fat-Boy had been punched several times. He had suffered a nosebleed and a split lip, which had trickled blood down the front of his imitation Zegna silk jacket. He looked at me without surprise, the glum expression of an admonished child. I gave him a small but encouraging smile. He didn't return it.

  “Your friends,” announced Lebogang with the false glee of a man who is about to enjoy a good taunting. “Your friends,” he repeated with extra emphasis, “think that I’m going to let you walk off this boat like free men, despite your efforts to deceive me.”

  There was no response from Fat-Boy, who had looked from me to Robyn, and now gazed at the brightly coloured fish in the aquarium behind Lebogang as if he had seen nothing like them before.

  “But, sadly for you,” continued Lebogang, “that is not the way this will go. You know what the penalty is for cheating a Xhosa.” Then, noticing Fat-Boy’s distraction, he raised his voice and shouted something at him in their language.

  Fat-Boy turned to me.

  “They opened the boxes, Angel,” he said. “They know we switched the boxes.”

  His lazy eye drooped, and a trickle of blood oozed from his swollen lip and dripped down his chin.

  “But they’re still loading them, Angel. Still loading those boxes full of that lead shit onto that boat. Why are they doing that?”

  “Explain the penalty,” shouted Lebogang. “The penalty for deceiving amaXhosa.”

  “Is this your rescue plan?” Fat-Boy asked.

  “We didn’t have much time,” I admitted, and tried smiling encouragingly again, but from the look on Fat-Boy’s face it didn’t work as intended.

  “The penalty,” bellowed Lebogang, “is death!”

  Suddenly, the small things that had been bothering me fell into place like pieces of a puzzle. I realised why Lebogang’s anger was feigned, even now, as he bellowed his hollow threats at us. I realised why he had given Robyn a gloating smile, why he didn’t care that we had taken his gold, and why his men were loading boxes of plaster and lead onto an old boat. Our rescue plan had failed. I knew it in that moment. We had come into the enemy’s lair hoping to bargain our way out of it, only to discover that we had nothing to bargain with.

  I turned to the mute soldier standing immobile beside Robyn. He was wearing full combat kit, reflective sunglasses hiding his eyes an
d most of his face. The arms and legs of the uniform were too short, as if it had shrunk in the wash. But the sides of the jacket drooped on his thin frame as if it had been stretched, or been made for a man with a very different build. It was not his uniform. Because he was not a member of the Dark Bizness militia at all. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses, but I knew the pale grey eyes were watching me. He was no doubt also realising the extent of our failure and trying to figure out our next move. Because the mute soldier was Chandler, our Trojan Horse. He had detached the rope that bound him to Robyn, and her hands were now not bound at all, although she held them behind her as if they were. Now that we were reunited with Fat-Boy, the time had come for us to move, time for me to give the word. I glanced at Fat-Boy, who did not know the plan, but I didn’t think it would take him long to catch up once the fireworks started. I turned back to Chandler.

  “Now,” I said.

  He swung around to the soldier standing between us and swung his AK-47 by its barrel, striking the side of the soldier’s head like he was trying for a home run. The soldier staggered backwards and dropped his weapon. It made no sound as it fell to the soft carpet. Chandler leapt onto the stumbling figure, hammering at him with his fists. I crouched low to bring my centre of gravity down and then twisted around in a poor imitation of a Capoeira cartwheel move. With my hands bound behind my back, I rolled onto my shoulders, and my legs caught the soldier standing behind me with a double blow across his chest. He lurched back in his surprise, and grappled at the fire selector of his AK-47, which was a foolish thing to do because it lost him time. My feet found the floor again, and I rolled through the move and used the momentum to spring off the soft carpet and raised my head into his chin. His head snapped backwards, and I guessed the nerve clusters beneath his jaw were lighting up. He dropped, and I landed clumsily on his legs, rolled over and brought a knee onto his diaphragm. His body twisted as I drove the air out of him, and he rolled to the side as his muscles spasmed.