Dictator

64

Downstairs in the living room, the fourth of the guards was the only one still standing, although he was already losing his coordination. Carver slammed his left elbow into the guard’s Adam’s apple, let him follow the others to the ground, then crouched over him. He placed one hand over the man’s throat, gently squeezing the already damaged airway, while his other hand felt for the handle of the man’s gun and pulled it out of its black leather shoulder holster. He shoved the gun in his waistband and felt around on the other side of the chest. The ribs were moving as the guard made his last feeble attempts to breathe. His feet flopped about as he tried to kick himself free. Carver ignored all that. His only interest was the two clips of ammunition in the holster’s second pocket. He took them out and placed them in his jacket pocket, then got to his feet.

Henderson Gushungo was silent and motionless now. In his last moments, he had coughed blood on to the marble tile in front of him. He had also evacuated his bowels and the stench of it was now hanging heavily in the air. The great dictator, dying in his own blood and shit. His wife, half her body trapped beneath her bodyguard’s, made a weak mewling sound and with one last desperate effort reached out to grab her husband’s lifeless hand.

From outside the room, Carver heard the sound of footsteps running down the stairs and into the hall. There was a high-pitched scream; the sound of two shots being fired; more screams, wounded ones this time; then two more shots.

There had been three women left alive in the house. Some, if not all of them, were now dead. But which ones?

Carver started to move past the twitching, gasping bodies of the dying guards towards the door of the living room, his gun out in front of him, ready to fire at any moment.

Then Carver felt something grab at his ankle. He stumbled to the ground, wincing as he cracked his kneecaps on the hard marble surface. He turned his head and saw that one of the bodyguards had somehow summoned the strength to reach out and wrap a hand round his leg. Carver kicked out with his other leg, hitting the guard’s nose and feeling the crack as it broke beneath his heel. There was a gurgling sound as air left the guard’s lungs, a final breath. But he did not let go. The dead fingers still had Carver in their grip.

Up ahead, Carver saw a shadow against the wall by the door as Mabeki’s head bobbed into the doorway, then disappeared from view. Carver fired two quick shots towards the doorway then writhed desperately to change his position as Mabeki’s gun-hand appeared.

Mabeki shot four rounds in quick succession. One went straight through the giant window on the far side of the room. Two ploughed into the marble floor, one so close to Carver that he could feel the stabs of tiny, needle-sharp splinters of stone against the side of his face. The fourth hit the glossy bald head of the man whose hand was clasped round Carver’s ankle, entering just above his nose and blowing away the back of his skull.

The fingers jerked open with a convulsive twitch.

Carver jumped to his feet, ran to the wall next to the door and pressed his back to it. Then, with his newly acquired gun held vertically next to his head, he slid sideways along the wall towards the door.

That was when he heard the single word ‘Carver!’

Zalika had survived!

Carver could make out the sound of feet scrabbling for purchase on the marble floor. Now he too had to move fast. He abandoned his cautious progress and dashed to the door, throwing himself forward into the hall then rolling to one side as Mabeki fired into the space where he had just been.

Carver came to rest by the body of Tina Wong. She was lying next to the other servant, so close that the blood from their wounds was mingling into a single pool on the floor. Wong’s eyes were open, looking straight into his in mute accusation: ‘I’m dead because of you.’

He looked up and brought his gun to bear. Mabeki was silhouetted against the light from the open front door. Carver’s gun was pointing right at him. Or rather, it was pointing right at Zalika Stratten, who was standing there, directly in front of Mabeki, his arm round her throat.

Her eyes looked dull. There was blood trickling from a cut on her left temple. A decade after Moses Mabeki had first kidnapped her, he had her at his mercy once again. And this time Carver had no clear shot, no answer as Mabeki rasped, ‘You try to shoot, she dies. You come after me, she dies.’

Zalika herself was silent now. But Carver could clearly see her mouth the words ‘Help me… help me!’

Carver lay on the cold marble tiles, beneath the vulgar wallpaper. The blood from the two women’s bodies was slowly spreading towards him. He cursed himself: why had he let himself be persuaded to bring an amateur, however capable, on a mission as important as this? Eaten up by frustration and helplessness, paralysed with fear for the woman he was supposed to have protected, Carver barely moved a muscle as Mabeki hustled Zalika out of the door. Only when he heard the sound of two car doors slamming shut and an engine coming to life did he get to his feet, hurdle the pathetic corpses in their blood-soaked grey dresses and start running frantically down the hall.