Tom Cain - Dictator

‘I was shot. A nine-millimetre parabellum round fired at extreme close range passed right through my mouth from one side to the other. I was left for dead by the man who shot me. His mistake.’

‘Did you ever find him?’

‘He is about to find me.’

Zheng nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see. He is the problem you referred to?’

Mabeki gave a fractional nod of assent.

‘Then you’d better follow me,’ Zheng said.

They made their way out of the market and down to the water’s edge. A flight of stone steps with a polished metal handrail led down from the quayside. A square-bowed boat whose sturdy wooden hull was buffered with old tyres bumped up and down against the bottom steps in the swell of the water. The deck, sheltered by a canvas roof stretched across a metal frame, was scattered with plastic buckets and boxes. An old woman in loose grey pyjamas with a large mushroom-shaped straw hat on her head was standing barefoot among them. When she saw Zheng she rattled off a high-pitched, hectoring volley of incomprehensible Chinese, pointing at Mabeki as she spoke. Zheng bowed respectfully and replied in a far more conciliatory style. The old woman spat disgustedly on to the deck, glared at Mabeki, then made her way to the stern of the boat.

A second later, the boat was reversing away from the steps. The old woman turned it round, miraculously avoiding all the other boats clustered by the quay, then set off across the bay. The fishing boats were crammed so tightly that Mabeki could barely see the water, yet the woman steered between them with an ease that came from a lifetime’s practice, squeezing between hulls that seemed barely a hand’s breadth apart and heading straight towards apparent dead ends that miraculously opened up at her approach.

They passed under a road bridge across the harbour and saw, not far away, the dazzling strings of fairy-lights and gaudily painted hull of the Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant, where four thousand customers could dine at a single sitting, rise in tiers into the night air, a huge temple of gastronomy and greed.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said Zheng. ‘I’m afraid our destination is much more modest.’

That, Mabeki soon realized, was an understatement. The old woman brought their little boat to a halt by the rectangular, barge-like hull of a far smaller, dingier restaurant, moored on the far side of Aberdeen Harbour, connected to the shore by a red-painted walkway. A rusty metal ladder hung down from the side of the hull. The old woman nestled the blunt bow of her boat against the foot of the ladder and gave a dismissive gesture in its direction.

‘This is where we get off,’ said Zheng.

‘One moment,’ said Mabeki.

Turning his back on Zheng, who was already stepping gingerly on to the ladder, he took a few paces towards the old woman and, speaking quietly but with infinite menace, told her in Ndebele that she was a dung-eating whore of a baboon with shrivelled-up breasts and a closed-up cunt as dry as an old gourd. He revelled in the fear that spread across the crone’s incomprehending face as he loomed over her and let the poison of his malice fill her soul. In a louder, much friendlier voice, he switched to English and said, ‘Thank you for bringing us here, grandmother.’ Then he walked up to the bow and sprang with surprising athleticism, even grace, on to the ladder. A few seconds later, he was standing on the restaurant’s deck.

‘Let’s go,’ said Zheng.

He led Mabeki along a narrow walkway running down the side of the hull to the front entrance to the restaurant. There were no strings of fairy-lights here, just a scruffy, dimly lit interior where no more than a dozen tables were filled. The desultory hum of scattered conversations almost faded away as Mabeki walked by.

A white-jacketed waiter gave a respectful nod to Zheng as he walked to the back of the dining area, past the bar and through a door into a kitchen heavy with the smell of stir-fried food. Here, too, the atmosphere was half-dead. A handful of cooks were standing by one of the ranges, talking and smoking with the lassitude of men who did not expect to be taking many more orders that night. Zhen ignored them and led Mabeki to a metal door.

‘Watch your head,’ he said as he opened it and moved into a small store-cabin.

The walls were lined with metal shelves on which huge drums of cooking oil and soy sauce were crammed alongside cans, bags and glass jars of produce, packets of dried noodles and sacks of rice. A porthole, cut into the hull near the ceiling, had been opened to provide ventilation but the air was still thick with the cigarette smoke that rose from the four men sitting around a small wooden table, topped with a plastic cloth, in the middle of the cabin. All were as old as the woman who had piloted the boat. Dressed in a motley selection of sweaty, dirt-stained vests and tatty shirts, they looked like old dockside navvies, or lowly ship’s crewmen. In front of them, the table was covered in ivory mah-jongg tiles marked with Chinese characters, piles of notes in an assortment of currencies, bottles of spirits and cheap plastic tumblers, all illuminated by the single bare bulb that hung above the table.

Zheng approached the oldest man at the table and spoke quietly in his ear. The man looked up at Mabeki, who caught not a trace of discomfort, let alone fear, in his eyes. So this was Fisherman Zheng. Well, he was a tough, cold-blooded old bastard, that was for sure. But Mabeki wasn’t worried. He’d spent the past decade working for the biggest cold-blooded old bastard of them all. He’d fucked Henderson Gushungo’s wife and got away with it. He’d changed their relationship day by day, inch by inch, until he was the real master and Gushungo his puppet. He was entirely confident that he could deal with this old Chinese gangster, too.

Fisherman turned his attention back to his nephew. They spoke for a few seconds, and then Zheng spoke in English to Mabeki: ‘My uncle will hear your proposal. He wishes you to know, however, that nothing happens in Hong Kong without him knowing about it, or that he cannot discover within a matter of an hour or two. There is, therefore, no point in you trying to mislead or cheat him. It is very important, for your sake, that you understand this.’

Zheng lowered his voice. ‘Seriously, Moses, you don’t want to cross my uncle.’

Mabeki gave his own approximation of a smile. ‘I understand, Johnny. So please assure your uncle first that I would never attempt to double-cross him, any more than he would think of double-crossing me. Also, inform him that I have spent the past ten years as the most trusted personal adviser of the President of Malemba, His Excellency the Honourable Henderson Gushungo, with the result that there is no threat he could possibly make that I have not both heard before and made myself. Further, tell him that no matter how many people he has had killed during his long and illustrious career, I have killed more in my relatively short one. And fourthly, please ask him, with all due respect for his age, dignity and position, to stop pretending that he cannot speak English, since I can see very clearly from his eyes that he has understood every word I have just said.’

Mabeki watched the anger flare in Fisherman Zheng’s eyes, knew that he’d caught the old man red-handed, and added, ‘As I thought. So, let me explain the deal I have in mind, which is in essence very simple. At around noon on Sunday, roughly thirty-six hours from now, I will sell you a consignment of uncut Malemban diamonds worth at least fifteen million US dollars for a mere eight million. In exchange for this discount, which is much greater than I would normally give to any middle-man, you will kindly do me two additional services. One of them is nothing, a mere delivery run. The second is more complicated.’