Dictator

60

Carver kissed the red silk stole and draped it round his neck. He took out the cruet filled with wine, the chalice and finally the pyx, the weapon with which he would carry out the killing.

As he took out his service book, Carver began to feel nervous for the first time; but these were the nerves any performer – actor, athlete or assassin – needs if they are to do their best work. They sharpened Carver’s senses and honed his concentration. He had no doubt now about the rights or wrongs of what he was about to do. Once the decision to take the job had been made, the argument was over so far as he was concerned. He had made up his mind and he would stick with it.

From outside the room, Carver could hear the sound of footsteps and respectfully lowered voices coming down the stairs. His stomach tightened. The action was about to begin. The door of the living room opened and the bodyguards snapped to attention as Moses Mabeki came in, then stood to one side to let his master and mistress through.

Faith Gushungo caught Carver’s eye first. She was much taller than he had expected, at least as tall as Carver himself, her height exaggerated by a brightly patterned silk headdress. Her eyes were hidden behind impenetrable dark glasses and her mouth was set in a downward curve of stony disapproval.

‘Why is Gibson not here?’ she snapped, not waiting for any introductions.

Carver adopted the ingratiating manner of a meek and easily intimidated vicar. ‘I’m awfully sorry, but he’s suffering an attack of food poisoning.’

The First Lady gave a dismissive ‘Pah!’ And only then did Carver realize that she had so dominated the past few seconds that he had paid no attention whatsoever to her husband.

‘The President of Malemba, the Honourable Henderson Gushungo,’ said Mabeki.

The man who stepped forward, his hand outstretched, was as surprising in appearance as his wife, but in the opposite direction. Carver had expected a man exuding the same sense of power and malice as Mabeki, but magnified a hundredfold. This, after all, was the dictator who had maintained an iron grip on his country for three decades; who had torn down its economy around his ears; tortured his people, destroyed his enemies, outraged global opinion, yet left it impotent to harm him.

And all that was left was a wizened husk.

Gushungo’s face was as wrinkled and shrivelled as a dessicated prune. Just a few thin tufts of curly silver hair clung to his scalp. His body had shrunk to the point where he wore his suit like a child dressing up in his father’s clothes. The hand he offered Carver was visibly quivering. The other hand clung to an ivory-topped walking stick.

This doddery old geezer was the man Carver had travelled halfway round the world to kill.

For a second he wondered why he should bother. Gushungo’s life expectancy could surely be measured in months, even weeks, rather than years. But then he thought about Canaan and Farayi Iluko, rotting in their Malemban cells, and realized that their life expectancies were shorter still.

In any case, it was clear that, as Patrick Tshonga had suggested, Faith Gushungo was now the real power in the room. She was his primary target. And then he caught something between her and Mabeki – a fractional turning of her head towards him; the faintest twisting of his lips – and thought, ‘They’re in this together.’ And then other thoughts, half-formed, crowded into his mind, bringing with them a jumbled, inarticulate sense of danger, something not quite right. But there was no time to follow them because Carver was shaking Gushungo’s hand, murmuring ‘Mr President’ and making his way to the bar, to stand in front of the cross, as Mabeki ushered the Gushungos to their seats.

The two bodyguards, joined now by another pair of men, took their places, standing behind the Gushungos. And then, even though it was still open, there was a gentle tap on the living-room door and a pair of young Chinese women wearing housemaids’ grey cotton dresses and starched white aprons tiptoed into the room and formed a third line of worshippers behind the bodyguards. Carver recognized one of them as Tina Wong. She did not acknowledge his presence in any way. Either she did not recognize him through the disguise or, more likely, she was just as good a professional as she’d seemed when they’d met on the ferry thirty-six hours earlier.

Carver had to repress the urge to shout out, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ It had never occurred to him that the Chinese staff would be required to take communion as well as everyone else. Was Faith Gushungo really that much of a religious maniac? Or were Wong and her colleague simply Christians themselves? It was possible, Carver supposed. Hong Kong had been British for a hundred and fifty years. Why shouldn’t ex-colonies people choose to worship in the Church of England? He cursed himself for not thinking of that sooner.

Mabeki took up his position, standing by the door, watching over the service. He nodded at Carver to start.

‘Good morning,’ said Carver, trying to think of his next lines. His mind was momentarily blank. His concentration was awry. He had not yet even begun and things were already going wrong.