Dictator

56

The security guard at the main gate of the Hon Ka Mansions development waved Carver’s car through without a second glance. It was Sunday morning. An Englishman wearing the costume of one of their clergymen had arrived to see the Gushungos. There was nothing unusual about that. If this one had brought a young woman with him that was none of the guard’s concern.

Carver drove uphill along a winding drive that ran between two lines of newly built villas, each standing in its own grounds, discreetly hidden from its neighbours. Shortly before he reached the Gushungo property, he stopped and let Zalika out of the car. Then he continued up the drive, turned into the Gushungos’ semicircular forecourt and parked his scuffed and battered old Honda next to a gleaming silver Rolls-Royce. From the way it sat fractionally low on its wheels, he guessed it had been given the full security treatment and was now as impregnable as a very fast, ultra-luxurious tank. It was a beautiful machine, all right, but it had been put to an ugly purpose that embodied the absolute contempt held by so many African dictators for their people’s poverty. Carver thought of Justus and his children. They were sweating in prison cells, and here was Gushungo swanning around in a Roller.

Well, not for very much longer.

The front door to the house was raised a few feet and reached by a short flight of steps. One of the presidential bodyguards opened it and glared suspiciously at his visitor. He was half a head taller than Carver and fifty pounds heavier. His neck strained against the tightly buttoned collar of his white shirt. His shaved head glinted with sweat.

‘Good morning,’ said Carver, holding out a hand. ‘My name is Wishart. I’m an assistant priest at St George’s Church. I’ve come to give Holy Communion to Mr and Mrs… well, to President and, ah… well, the Gushungos, anyway.’

‘Wait here,’ the guard said, and disappeared into the house.

Half a minute later, Moses Mabeki was standing by the door, the guard looming massively behind him. Carver felt his skin prickle with a combination of tension and disgust. The memory of that night in Mozambique came back to him so vividly that he could not believe Mabeki would not know that he was the man who had caused his disfigurement. He had to remind himself that he had been wearing a mask over his face, that Mabeki could not possibly recognize him. And yet he could not escape the instinctive sense that Mabeki knew, by some force of intuition, precisely who he was.

If he did know, however, Mabeki gave no outward sign of it.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, not attempting even a veneer of civility.

‘I’m Wishart, the Reverend Roderick Wishart if one’s being formal. I’m afraid poor Tony Gibson isn’t feeling terribly well this morning. Food poisoning. You know how ghastly that is…’

Mabeki gave no sign of knowing or caring anything about food poisoning, one way or the other.

‘Well, anyway,’ Carver continued, ‘he couldn’t make it, so Simon Dollond asked me to step in for him, as it were.’

Mabeki did not acknowledge Carver’s words. He looked past him at the car, studying it, assessing it as a possible threat. Carver thought of the Terminator films, the data flashing up before the cyborg’s eyes as he scanned the world around him. Mabeki seemed barely more human.

He looked back at Carver. ‘Come in,’ he said. Then he glanced at the guard and said, ‘Search him.’