Tom Cain: Dictator

For a fraction of a second hope flickered in the women’s hearts as they stood in the darkness, each gripping a rifle. Whoever was up there was not blundering around. They knew exactly what they were doing. That could only mean Dick Stratten, or one of the very few family retainers who were trusted enough to know about the shelter.

Then the hatch was flung open and a disembodied voice – a refined, educated voice – commanded them, ‘Put down your guns. They are of no help to you now. My men have hand-grenades. If you do not leave the shelter within the next ten seconds, unarmed, holding on to the ladder with both hands, they will blow you to pieces. Ten… nine…’

‘You two-faced little shit,’ hissed Jacqui Stratten. Then she gripped the ladder and called ‘We’re coming up!’ as she stepped up into the beam of light coming through the open hatch.

Zalika Stratten followed her mother. Before she’d reached the top of the ladder, strong hands reached down to grab her, pull her upwards and dump her on the workshop floor. She landed by a man’s feet, clad in expensive, barely worn safari boots.

She heard the man’s voice bark, ‘Take the mother away.’

Zalika raised her face and looked Moses Mabeki in the eye as he said, ‘Your brother is dead. Your father is dead. Your mother will soon be dead. You, however, are coming with me.’

Two weeks later, a man named Wendell Klerk phoned Carver and summoned him to a meeting at a hotel on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. Klerk did not say what he wanted to discuss. He did not need to. He merely barked, ‘Be there in thirty minutes,’ and hung up without waiting for an answer.

Carver was intrigued. Klerk was as familiar a figure in the gossip columns, invariably attached to the latest in a long line of beauty-queen blondes, as he was in the business pages. Born into a working-class white family, one of two children of a railway worker and his socially ambitious teacher wife, Klerk had fought on the losing side in the civil war and left the country soon after British Mashonaland’s rebirth as Malemba. He’d settled in Johannesburg, South Africa, from where he’d built an international business empire whose interests included gambling, hotels, construction and mining – ‘from casinos to coalmines’ as one reporter had put it. Klerk was known as a tough operator. Over the years both journalists and hostile politicians had accused him of corruption, bribery and even ties to organized crime. But none of the charges had stuck. If anything, they had just made the public warm to Klerk as a tough but likeable renegade.

In recent weeks, however, Klerk had been in the news for very different reasons. Carver assumed that was the reason for the call. Out of curiosity, if nothing else, he wanted to know what Klerk had in mind.

Twenty-seven minutes later, Carver walked into the reception of a modern low-slung building faced in brick and terracotta rendering that made it look more Moroccan than Swiss. He was led by one of the staff across the ground-floor reception area, out past a swimming-pool ringed with unoccupied sun-loungers and down into a tunnel which passed under the main road that ran along the lakeshore. At the far end of the tunnel a jetty stretched out across the water. A long, thin wooden motorboat that resembled a Venetian water-taxi was moored at the far end.

The boat belonged to the hotel, whose insignia was embroidered on the pennant that fluttered from its stern. But the man standing at the open wheel in front of the covered passenger cabin was not one of the standard white-jacketed hotel boatmen. He wore the global uniform of the upmarket heavy: black suit, tie, shades and shoes; white shirt; earpiece; a gun invisibly but unquestionably secreted somewhere about his person.

Carver was patted down, then ushered into the cabin where Wendell Klerk was waiting. Klerk’s short, stocky, powerful body, with its snub-nosed peasant’s face and tightly curled black hair, looked as incongruous as a cannonball deposited on the elegant quilted seating. The two men shook hands, then sat in silence as the boat was cast off from the shore and motored out on to the lake.

Klerk looked out through a porthole. Evidently happy that they had travelled far enough to be out of earshot of any shore-based surveillance, he turned his black-brown eyes on Carver and asked, ‘You know who I am, ja?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you are aware of my interest in a certain kidnapping case.’

‘Sure, I watch the news. You’re the Stratten girl’s uncle – her mother’s brother.’

‘In that case you can work out why I wanted to see you.’ Klerk’s voice was a deep, guttural rumble.

Carver nodded. ‘Your sister was killed and your niece was kidnapped. With the father and the brother both dead, that left only you to get her back. I assume you hired one of the top security firms to handle the negotiations to recover her. Clearly they’ve not succeeded, so now you’re thinking it’s time for Plan B. Money’s not an issue for a man of your resources and you must have some very powerful, well-connected friends. Some of them could have been involved with the organization I used to work for. Maybe you were in it yourself. Either way, I’m assuming my name came up. Right?’

Klerk nodded. ‘Close enough. So let me tell you the situation. The kidnappers are moving every few days, but my people have been tracking them wherever they go. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing stays secret in Africa for long, not if you’re willing to pay. I have not told the authorities because I do not trust them either to keep the information secret, or act on it appropriately. Instead, I want you to get my niece Zalika Stratten out of there. She must be recovered unharmed. Her safety is the only reason I have not sent my people in after her long before now. They are good, but – how can I put it? – they lack subtlety. That is why I have come to you.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Carver, ‘but however subtle I might be, the guys who have your niece aren’t likely to let her go without a fight. Even if she doesn’t get hurt, they will. And I don’t want to end up rotting in an African jail.’

‘I understand. But you can rest assured that if any of the kidnappers are made to pay the price for their actions, I will not care, and nor will the police. I will make sure of that.’

Klerk rubbed his fingers together to indicate that a willingness to pay would, once again, be the key. Then he looked at Carver, appraisingly.

‘How tall are you?’ he asked.

‘Five eleven.’

‘Weight?’

‘About one seventy-five in pounds, a little under eighty kilos.’

‘Light heavyweight,’ said Klerk. ‘That’ll do. You keep yourself in shape?’

Carver gave a silent prayer of thanks for the hundred-plus miles of hard cross-country running he’d put in over the past fortnight. ‘Yes.’

‘Fully recovered?’

So Klerk knew about the torture Carver had endured in the chalet outside Gstaad and the havoc that had wreaked on his mind.

‘I’m fit for action, yes,’ said Carver.

Klerk looked at him again like a jeweller examining a stone under his glass, searching for hidden flaws. ‘Yes, I believe you are,’ he finally replied. ‘Right, I’m sure we can work out a financial package, you and I. My people will get you all the details we have about the kidnappers’ current location. That just leaves two things you must know. The first is that Zalika Stratten is all the family I have left. I have never been able to have children, Mr Carver. I always hoped there would be someone to carry on my work when I am gone, keep my business alive. Zalika is my only hope and I will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to get her back. Whatever you want, you will have. Understood?’