Dictator

98

Carver did nothing. It wasn’t out of any kind of bravado. He simply couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

‘Put the gun down,’ Zalika repeated. ‘On the ground. Now.’

Very slowly, calmly, keeping his eyes on hers, he did as he was told.

‘Now kick it away from you.’

Again Carver obeyed her. He could make out every detail of her face in the clear moonlight as she stood over him, pointing the gun down at his chest, the threat of the bullet pinning him to the spot like a butterfly on a pin. Now it was his turn to repeat himself: ‘What are you doing? Where’s Justus?’

‘He’s dead,’ she said, so flatly, with such impersonal detachment, that he hardly recognized it as her voice at all. And then: ‘I shot him.’

The information was so unexpected, so wrong, that Carver could not make sense of it. ‘What do you mean, you shot him? Why the hell did you do that?’

Zalika looked almost surprised that it was not obvious to him. ‘Why do you think? Because I had to stop him getting to the border. Just like I’m going to stop you.’

Still the words she spoke made no sense to him. ‘Are you mad? We’ve got to get to the border. Mabeki’s going to be here any minute. That’s the only way of escaping him.’

‘But I don’t want to escape him,’ she said, her voice beginning to rise as she taunted him. ‘Don’t you get it? All this time, you’ve been thinking he’s the kidnapper. But he’s not. You are. Those men back there, the ones you killed, they weren’t there to keep me in. They were there to keep you out. I wasn’t a prisoner. I wanted to be there, to be with Moses at last after all these years. That was why I had no clothes on when you found me. I was waiting for him.’

Carver had sleepwalked into a looking-glass world, where up was down, wrong was right and all his hopes turned out to be delusions. It seemed now that everything she had ever said to him was a lie that had meant the exact opposite of what he had believed. Everything she had done had been for totally different reasons to the ones he had assumed. He’d been fool enough to care about Zalika Stratten. He’d risked his life to save her. Had she really not wanted to be saved?

He made one last effort to try to preserve his own view of reality.

‘Mabeki abducted you when we were in Hong Kong. He held a gun to your head. I saw him do it.’

‘And I let him,’ she said. ‘Then, when we’d got outside, I ran to the van he had waiting, and they drove me away. I’d wanted to stay at the house, so that we could kill you together, Moses and me. But he said that was too risky. He wanted to be sure I was all right. And he’d already worked out a plan for dealing with you. All the time I was in that van I just prayed that he would get away from you safely, so that he could join me. And I prayed that you were dead, Sam. I prayed for that with all my heart.’

‘And everything between us, that was…’

‘Just a way of getting you to Hong Kong, so that you would kill the Gushungos, and then we would kill you.’

‘So it was you all along, selling us out, telling Mabeki everything.’

‘Oh yes.’ She smiled. ‘And it was him all along, telling me about the Gushungos. There were no old ladies at that church in Hong Kong. I didn’t have to spend hours checking out their house. Anything I ever wanted to know, Moses just told me. We never met. But we talked on the phone, sent emails. He’s even my Facebook friend. Fake name and picture, of course.’ She laughed at the deceitful absurdity. ‘It’s been going for years. Did Wendell ever tell you how he got his bright idea to get rid of the Gushungos?’

‘No.’

‘Then I will. I went up to him one day and said, “I want revenge” in my best blank, moody, kidnap-victim voice. That got him thinking, just like Moses said it would. After that, all I had to do was drop the occasional hint and… well, here we are.’

Carver had a limited appetite for self-pity. The pain he felt was rapidly mutating into a cold, detached anger. ‘Well I hope you’re pleased with yourself. This country’s lost the chance to be free. And your uncle’s dead. Shot in the back. Did you know that?’

‘Of course.’

‘And it doesn’t bother you? Wendell Klerk rescued you, gave you a home… the guy loved you like a daughter, and this is how you repay him?’

‘Loved me? Is that what you think? He loved money. All I was to him was a way of keeping his precious business alive when he was gone. He only paid you to come after me in Mozambique because it was cheaper than paying the ransom.’

‘That’s not true. I know it’s not. And how can you say you want to be with Moses Mabeki? The man’s a psychopath. He killed your family. He tried to rape you. I saw him in that room, by your bed, half-undressed…’

Zalika’s laugh was derisive, contemptuous of his stupidity. ‘It wasn’t rape. It was the most glorious moment of my life. I’d been in love with Moses since I was a little girl. I was willing to do anything, endure anything if it meant being with him. Finally, all my dreams were about to come true. Plain little Zalika, Mummy’s problem child, the girl who wasn’t pretty enough, or sweet enough, who couldn’t get a boyfriend, who had to spend her whole life being compared to her wonderful, handsome, charming older brother… Finally I was going to get my man. And that’s when Uncle Wendell’s hired hooligan has to come charging through the door… And look what you did to him! Moses was so beautiful. He was like a God. But you took all that away from me. You bastard! I hate you! Every night we were together, I only got through it by telling myself I was doing it for him.’

She was unravelling, thought Carver. All the secret resentments she’d stored up for years were pouring out, toxic delusions that had driven everything she’d ever done.

‘For Christ’s sake, Zalika, listen to yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ve fallen in love with your captor. It’s normal, the Stockholm Syndrome – happens to hostages, kidnap victims, even people who’ve been tortured. But we can get you help.’

‘Help? I don’t want help!’ she screamed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’

‘He killed your family,’ Carver said, emphasizing each word.

‘Yes, he did. He killed my bitch of a mother and the brother I hated.’

‘He killed your father, too. Did you hate him?’

For the first time he saw a sign of weakness in the wall of loathing and self-pity she’d built round her soul. ‘My father… my father was a thief,’ Zalika said. ‘He owned land stolen from the people. He got rich by keeping Malembans poor.’

‘Mabeki told you that, did he?’

‘He explained it to me, yes, but-’

‘And that was a good enough reason for your father to die?’

‘There was no choice. That’s how it had to be. I didn’t like it, but Moses explained it and I believed him. I loved him. I still love him. And he loves me. He wants me by his side when he fulfils his destiny. He was born to rule Malemba. I was born to be his woman.’

‘You deluded little bitch. You had everything and you threw it away. You betrayed the people who loved you, and for what? If you think Moses Mabeki loves you, you’re as mad as he is. He just wants to fuck you. Fuck your family, fuck your class, fuck your race… it’s not exactly subtle, is it? And once he’s done it, he’ll kill you, just like he killed the best of your people. Count on it.’

‘You’re wrong! You’re wrong! He’s coming for me now. Then I’m giving you to him. I’m going to watch him take you apart, piece by piece. And then we’ll be together, the two of us, and-’

The sentence ended there. Zalika had seen something beyond Carver. She smiled, her whole face transformed by an expression of pure delight… and then the joy was replaced by shocked surprise as a burst of semi-automatic gunfire hammered out, puncturing her body with a three-shot ellipsis of wounds that flowered diagonally across her chest, exited explosively out of her back and flung her to the floor of the little ravine.

‘She was deluded,’ said Moses Mabeki, walking past Carver and stopping when he reached Zalika Stratten’s body. ‘A useful idiot who had outlived her usefulness. It would have been amusing to have had her, of course – had her again, I should say. But there are some things more satisfying than mere sex. I had total control of her. I determined whether she lived or died. Far better.’

It was then that Carver truly hated Moses Mabeki: hated him for the way he had perverted, exploited and then discarded a girl whose only real sin was to have loved him – or rather, loved a dream of what he might once have been. Carver hated himself, too, for not finishing this when he first had the chance. So much suffering could have been avoided, for the want of one more bullet.

‘She was right too, though,’ Mabeki said. ‘I will take my time killing you. Get to your feet.’

Carver began to move. And then he frowned. There was something else moving out there, coming towards them down the same path Zalika had trodden. But this shadow was much larger.

Carver raised a finger and pointed past Mabeki. ‘Behind you,’ he said.

Mabeki raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘Please, don’t insult my intelligence.’

And then there was a roar so loud that it seemed to reverberate inside Carver’s body, liquefying his guts and filling him with a primal caveman terror that overrode all his years of training and combat.

Mabeki’s eyes widened. He spun round. And the old lion Lobengula summoned up the remnants of his strength, leapt from fifteen feet away and hit Mabeki with the full force of his massive body.