Tom Cain: Dictator

Lobengula had switched his attention to Mabeki’s right arm. Placing his front paws on Mabeki’s chest, to keep it still and give himself some leverage, he dug his teeth in just above the man’s elbow and shook his head to wrench the limp, unmoving arm out of the elbow joint, growling contentedly to himself as it did so.

Carver kept moving. He was almost there. Slowly, slowly, he reached out his hand and felt his fingertips touch the stock of the gun.

The lion’s tail gave another impatient twitch, the brushy end swishing by just inches from his outstretched fingertips. Carver tightened his grip and gently pulled the gun towards him.

Lobengula was relishing the taste and feel of fresh, blood-warmed meat. His wounds were forgotten. There was nothing on his mind but the feast he had in store.

And then, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something moving by the tip of his tail. He raised his head from his meal and looked round.

Carver didn’t wait to be attacked himself. He just switched his M4 to automatic fire and emptied an entire magazine into the lion’s body and head. There was a part of him that felt sad, almost ashamed at the slaughter of such a magnificent beast. But there was another, far greater part of him that had no intention whatever of being the second course. There was a horrible moment when it seemed that even this might not be enough, when the lion’s fighting spirit was so great that he attempted to charge through the torrent of bullets. But just as he seemed to be gathering himself for one last leap a round must have hit his heart, for his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell, stone dead, to the ground.

But even if the lion was dead, Moses Mabeki was not. His neck and shoulder had been opened up like a corpse on the dissecting table and his arm had been severed from his body, yet somehow the lion had missed his heart and his airpipe and he was still breathing. Just.

‘Help me,’ he whispered. ‘For the love of God, please help me.’

So now, all of a sudden, you discover religion, Carver thought.

He discarded the empty magazine from his M4 and rammed in a fresh one. Mabeki was lying at his feet, his car-crash face and his twisted mouth and the white bones and torn muscles of his ripped and blood-soaked body clearly visible.

‘Sure,’ said Carver, ‘I’ll help you.’

Then he pressed the trigger, and once again he did not let go until the magazine was empty.

When the killing was done, an emptiness came over him. He looked at all the bodies and wondered what the hell the point of any of it had been. Zalika’s lovely face was still untouched, and as she lay there in the pale-blue moonlight it was almost possible that she was waiting for him to come and wake her with a kiss. But hers was a sleep that would never end. Carver put a third magazine into his M4, more out of habit than anything else, and walked away down the gully.

He’d gone about a hundred metres when he heard the groan up ahead. Carver’s walk became a jog, then a run, then a flat-out sprint.

Justus was alive. Zalika hadn’t killed him. And Carver was going to get him across the border if it was the last thing he ever did.

Six Months Later…

Samuel Carver finished a mouthful of butter-soft fillet steak – nice and bloody in the middle, just as he liked it – and took a sip of 2001 Jardin Sophia, a superb red wine from a vineyard in Stellenbosch, South Africa. He looked around the restaurant at the waiters bustling between close-packed tables. It was hard to believe they were all in Sindele, the capital of a new, democratic Malemba.

‘Considering this country was starving six months ago, this isn’t a bad bit of steak,’ Carver said.

Brianna Latrelle laughed politely. She was sticking to mineral water. She had to. She was seven months pregnant.

‘It was never really a starving country,’ she replied. ‘It was a prosperous, fertile country starved by a mad dictator.’

‘Whatever happened to him, I wonder?’

This time her laugh was a lot more spontaneous. Brianna had quite a dirty cackle when she really laughed, Carver thought. It was one of the many things he was discovering he liked about her.

‘Who’d have guessed it would turn out this way?’ said Brianna. ‘Tshonga coming out of hiding, demanding an election, with a fair count this time…’

‘The guy’s got a helluva nerve, hasn’t he?’ said Carver. ‘You’ve got to admire him, really, the way he can talk about peace and democracy and keep a straight face.’

‘Well, he truly believes in them.’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Yeah, OK, so maybe he slipped up once or twice. But be fair, round here that’s nothing.’

‘And it helped that there was such a handy scapegoat, who just happened to have been the only survivor of the Gushungo assassination, found conveniently dead on a hill by the South African border, his body having been used for dinner by a lion.’

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,’ Brianna said.

Carver raised his glass. ‘I’ll certainly drink to that.’

They ate in companionable silence for a while, then Carver said, ‘So here we are, two directors of the Kamativi Mining Corporation. How did you think the first annual shareholders meeting went, Madam Chairperson?’

‘I think it went well, Mr Carver,’ she replied.

‘Bizarre how it’s all worked out, isn’t it? I take the mickey out of Tshonga, but he kept his word about the deal.’

‘Why shouldn’t he? You fulfilled your side of it.’ She smiled at Carver’s quizzical expression. ‘Yes, I know what your side of it was. Wendell told me when we were flying down to Jo’burg, that last time. We shared a lot more than he or I ever let on. You know I had a bad feeling about what went down, that weekend at Campden Hall. I told you then. But the mine was always a good deal for Malemba. So why shouldn’t Tshonga keep to it?’

‘I should have listened to you that time.’

‘Damn straight you should have… and when we met at the house in Sandton. It’s weird, looking back. I always sensed something had gone wrong with Zalika, even if I didn’t know what. I used to tell myself I was being unfair, that I was just jealous of how much Wendell cared for her. I should have trusted myself more.’

‘And I should have trusted her less.’

Carver didn’t want to think about Zalika Stratten any more than he had to. Time to change the subject.

‘So, the baby… did you tell Klerk about it?’

‘Yeah, just a few days before he died.’

‘He must have been ecstatic. He didn’t think he could have kids.’

‘I guess he hadn’t found the right girl,’ Brianna said with a melancholic mix of sadness and contentment in her voice.

‘Well he found the right girl in you all right. I just hope he knew it.’

‘He knew it,’ she said.

Her eyes began to fill with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ Carver said, reaching out to hold her wrist. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘No, it’s all right, you didn’t.’ She took a deep breath, dabbed her eyes with her napkin and forced a bright smile. ‘So, anyway, tell me about Justus and… what were those kids called again?’

‘Canaan and Farayi. They’re fine. Better than fine, actually. They got their farm back. Justus is rebuilding the house. He’s got a new tractor.’

‘Really?’ Brianna said. ‘That sounds expensive.’

‘The man got shot doing me a favour. It wasn’t a lot to do in return…’

‘You know, Wendell was right about you,’ she said. ‘He always liked you, even when you turned him down. He used to say’ – she lowered her voice into a feminine approximation of Klerk’s bass rumble – ‘ “That Carver, he keeps his word. He does what he says he’s going to do. And he can shoot the balls off a horsefly at a hundred metres.” ’