Dictator

27

A Quick Time file appeared on the TV screen and Alice pressed ‘play’. It was video footage, handheld, taken from the crowd at a political rally in Malemba. President Gushungo was giving a speech, ranting at the evils of white politicians in Britain and America. The camera, however, did not linger on him long. Instead the image zoomed and focused on a figure standing just behind the President, to his right-hand side: a tall, bespectacled man in an expensively tailored black suit, cut to fit his scrawny, emaciated frame.

He appeared to be paying little attention to the speech; all his concentration was on its audience. His head kept turning from side to side in a series of jerky, staccato movements as he looked out across the sweaty, jostling mass of people, observing their reactions, scanning them like a malevolent spider seeking out its prey.

The man’s posture was twisted by his right shoulder, which was hunched and curved in towards the side of his face. But the feature that caught Carver’s eye and which he then gazed at with a mixture of repulsion and compulsive fascination was the lower half of his face. What was left of it.

His jaw was twisted, misshapen and bereft of muscle control, so that his mouth kept flopping open. His cheeks had caved in like those of an old toothless codger, except that this was much worse, because the man’s skin was ridged and pitted with great welts of scar-tissue. His lips twisted up to one side in a vicious parody of a smile, revealing an expanse of vivid pink gum, a single, sharply pointed white canine tooth and a gaping black hole where his molars should have been.

Carver heard a high-pitched gasp and turned to see Alice stripped of her cool self-possession as she fought to control her emotions.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, blinking back tears. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I see this, I still can’t seem to take it.’

Carver looked at Klerk. ‘What the hell happened to that guy?’

‘You did,’ said Klerk. ‘That’s Moses Mabeki, the man who kidnapped Zalika Stratten. It was your bullets that made him the fine figure of a man he is today.’

‘Mabeki?’ Carver’s mind went back to the room above the shebeen and the man he’d left lying in a spreading pool of his own blood. ‘Last time I saw him he was dead.’

‘Plenty of people in Malemba believe he still is. They don’t believe he’s human. They think an evil spirit took up residence in Mabeki’s dead body, brought it back to life and then used it to spread death and suffering wherever he went.’

‘It is not an unreasonable opinion,’ said Patrick Tshonga. ‘One would not wish to believe that an ordinary man could be as cruel and as bloodthirsty as Moses Mabeki.’

‘You’ve obviously not met the same people I have,’ said Carver.

‘Oh no, Mr Carver, trust me, I know all about the evil that men do,’ said Tshonga. ‘I would just prefer it if we could blame evil spirits rather than human nature for their actions.’

‘So what exactly has Mabeki been up to?’

‘You name it,’ said Klerk. ‘Moses Mabeki is the man who does the President’s dirty work. If the President is an African Hitler, Mabeki is his Heinrich Himmler. He runs the secret police and approves their use of torture, coercion and brutality. He plans the war veterans’ attacks on the few white farmers who have not yet fled their lands, just as he planned the attack on my sister and her family. He organizes the forced expulsions of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and villages. Then he makes certain that there is not enough food for them on the lands where they are forced to settle. They say he likes to see people starve, you know. He cannot eat solid food himself – everything has to be pulped like baby food, or sucked through a straw – and he resents anyone who can.’

‘Sounds like I should have finished him off when I had the chance.’

‘Ach, don’t beat yourself up about it, man. You were there to rescue my niece. You used the force necessary to achieve your objective. No blame attaches to you.’

‘Big of you,’ said Carver.

‘On the other hand, if you were to remove Mabeki at the same time as the President, you would be doing me a great personal favour.’

‘And you would be liberating the people of my country from his wickedness,’ Tshonga interjected. ‘More importantly, you would remove one of the great obstacles to peace and democracy in Malemba. There would be little purpose in getting rid of the current President if his most able understudy were still able to continue his regime. If Mabeki succeeds to the presidency, the tyranny under which we have suffered for the past twenty-five years will seem like a golden age compared to what he would inflict, and the opportunity to establish a truly democratic government and a free society will vanish.’

‘And you won’t get your tantalum mine, will you, Klerk?’ said Carver.

A broad smile crossed Klerk’s face. ‘And your shares will be worth nothing, Sam. It seems our interests coincide, financially and personally. I want my revenge for what this man did to my family, and if you are half the man I take you for, you will want the satisfaction of completing the job you started all those years ago.’

‘Satisfaction doesn’t come into it,’ said Carver. ‘There are only two things that interest me. Can I do the job? And, can I live with myself after I’ve done it?’

He felt a gentle pressure on his arm, the touch of Alice’s hand.

‘Please, Mr Carver, take the job,’ she said. Her voice was urgent, anguished. ‘So many people have died. So many more are suffering. Surely it’s a good thing to try, at least, to help them.’

‘All right, suppose I did. People only hire me when they want total deniability. Whatever happens to Gushungo or Mabeki, you can’t afford to have it traced back to you. If I do the job – if – rest assured you’ll get that deniability. But I’ll need full logistical backup, some way of getting close to the President and a cover that will stand up to thorough examination. And that’s before we even talk about when, where and how the whole thing goes down.’

‘Of course,’ said Klerk, ‘that goes without saying. In fact, I have had one of my associates working on this project for some time now, finding out everything there is to know about the President’s movements, his security arrangements and the layouts of every one of his residences and offices on three different continents. We have people on the inside, supplying us with information. A dossier has been prepared that contains everything you could possibly want to know. If there is any further information that has somehow been omitted, we will get it for you. If there is anything you need to do your work, anything at all, we will provide it. My sole condition, and this is as much for your good as anyone else’s, is that my associate should work with you during the planning process and accompany you on the mission itself.’

‘On a job like this I prefer to work alone. Simplifies things.’

‘I understand,’ said Klerk. ‘Nevertheless, I insist.’

‘So who is this associate, then?’

Klerk gave a wry half-smile. ‘My niece, Zalika Stratten.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Carver snapped. ‘You’re asking me to put my balls on the line, not to mention the future of an entire bloody country, and all the billions you plan to make from that tantalum mine, and I’m supposed to do this at the same time as nursemaiding some screwed-up schoolgirl who’s got bugger-all training, experience or competence for this kind of work?’

Klerk’s smile broadened. ‘She’s not a schoolgirl any more, Sam. She’s a grown woman of twenty-seven. She’s highly intelligent, extremely fit, a qualified pilot and a first-class shot. I guarantee that her bushcraft skills are at least as good as yours, probably better. And no one on earth knows more about the President, or Mabeki, than she does.’

‘That’s just the problem, though, isn’t it? Mabeki knows her too. He’d recognize her the moment he clapped eyes on her.’

‘Really?’ said Alice. ‘You didn’t.’