Dictator

91

Carver was not a fan of the open-plan style. Not when it was fully lit and he had to make his way across a good fifty feet of living area, then up a single straight flight of stairs with flimsy wooden banisters and no decent cover anywhere. He came out of the dark with his M4 up and his eyes looking through the sights, ready to fire at the slightest movement or sound.

Yet none came.

At first he thought it might be a trap. He was being lured right into the property, the more easily to be caught at point-blank range. But the ambush he expected never came.

He took the stairs in half-a-dozen strides, three steps at a time.

The landing was deserted.

Carver turned right and made his way along the landing, stepping quietly, keeping his back to the wall until he came to the furthermost door. He paused to listen for any movement or noise from the room beyond it. There was none. He took a pace back, then smashed the heel of his boot against the door, crashing it open.

Nothing happened. The room was empty.

Carver checked around the bed. He opened the wardrobes and went through an internal door to the en-suite bathroom.

No one there.

He went back out to the landing and repeated the process in two more bedroom suites.

The main house had only ever had four bedrooms; guests were put up at smaller cottages in the grounds. When he reached the last bedroom, it was empty, just like the others. But the bedcover was pulled back, the sheets were crumpled and the indentation made by a resting head could still be seen on the pillow. A pair of jeans and a T-shirt had been left carelessly draped over the back of a chair. And there was something more, a lingering trace of scent in the air, a scent that went straight to his brain like a potent drug, triggering memories so powerful it was almost as if he were back in a hotel suite in Hong Kong with her body draped around his, his hand tracing a path down the curve of her spine…

‘Zalika!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you?’

There were no words of reply. But he thought he heard a sound from behind the bathroom door, the whimper of a frightened animal.

He was there in a second, striding across the room, flinging open the door and saying it again – ‘Zalika!’ – when he saw her naked body curled up in the bottom of a huge stone bath.

He went to her and reached down to touch her, desperate to know that she was still warm, still alive.

‘Are you all right?’

She nodded wordlessly and looked at him with wide, panicked eyes. All her hard-won self-assurance had deserted her, leaving just the broken husk of the girl he had first rescued all those years ago.

‘The guards ran away,’ she said. ‘They were so scared. I just wanted to hide. I didn’t know what was out there. I… I…’ The faintest glimmer of an exhausted smile flickered across her face. ‘I hardly dared hope it was you.’

‘Come on,’ Carver said, helping her from the bath, ‘let’s get you out of here.’

He hesitated then, trying to find the right words for what he had to ask next.

‘Has he… has he treated you all right?’

Zalika pressed herself closer to Carver. He felt her nod against his shoulder. Then she pulled away a fraction and looked him in the eye as she gently ran the tips of her fingers down the side of his face.

‘I’m OK,’ she whispered. ‘He hasn’t hurt me. I promise.’

She pulled on her clothes and followed Carver out of the house, clutching him tight as they passed the four dead bodies on the terrace. Justus met them outside and they began the walk to the Land Rover.

Far away in the night, a lion’s roar echoed across the bush once again, like a rumble of distant thunder.