No one talked about Malemba, or Gushungo, let alone the reason why Carver was a guest at the meal. It was as if there were an unspoken agreement to keep the conversation light and trivial.
After the meal, the diners began to drift upstairs to bed. Carver’s room was on the same corridor as Zalika’s. They went up together.
‘Well, this is me,’ she said, stopping outside her door.
They stood opposite each other, so close that it would take only the slightest inclination of their heads to join in the kiss that would open the door and take them both inside. The tension between them mounted. Then Zalika leaned across and gave Carver an innocent peck on the cheek. He did not move as she turned the handle, half-opened her door and then paused at the entrance to her room. She looked him in the eyes. And then she was gone.
Before long, only Tshonga and Klerk were left downstairs. They discussed their impressions of the afternoon’s discussion over brandy and cigars. Then the Malemban called it a day, leaving only Klerk behind.
In the small hours of Saturday morning, when all but one of the inhabitants of Campden Hall were lost in sleep, a mobile phone was used to contact a number in Malemba.
‘Carver arrived here today,’ the caller said. ‘We offered him the Gushungo assignment. He hasn’t accepted yet.’
The voice on the other end of the line was hard to make out. The reply had to be forced through a lazy mouth filled with spittle and incapable of precise speech: ‘Did you make sure he was tempted as I suggested?’
‘Oh yes. He knows you are still alive. We told him this is his chance to finish the job he started ten years ago.’
‘Did he like that idea?’
‘Hard to say. He wouldn’t commit himself.’
Moses Mabeki gave a long, rattling sigh, like a hiss from an irritable venomous snake.
‘I want them all dead: Gushungo, his bitch wife and Carver. All of them.’
‘Relax. He’ll take the job. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘Good. Everything we planned depends on that.’
‘I’m well aware of that,’ said the caller.
Then the phone snapped shut, the call ended, and within three minutes every bed in Campden Hall was occupied once again.
32
Wendell Klerk didn’t like to be hurried on a Saturday morning and saw no need to hurry his guests. The staff were on hand from the crack of dawn to provide anything anyone might want, but the first set event of the day was a midday brunch.
‘So, Sam, are you ready to shoot some clay pigeons?’ Klerk said, emphasizing his words with jabs of a sausage-laden fork.
Zalika smiled at Carver. ‘My uncle is very proud of his shooting ground. He had to bulldoze half of Suffolk to make it.’
‘At least half!’ said Klerk. ‘Patrick, will you be joining us?’
Tshonga smiled and shook his head. ‘No, Wendell, I have never had any skill with a gun. While my brothers were fighting for freedom in the bush-’
‘Ja, fighting me!’ Klerk interrupted.
‘I was studying law. All these years later, I am still happy just to read while others play with guns.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Klerk. ‘Brianna is not a great fan of shooting either, are you?’
‘Well, it’s not as boring as golf,’ Brianna sighed.
Carver laughed. So the plaything had a sense of humour hidden away inside that doll-like figure. There was more to her than met the eye. She had that, at least, in common with Zalika.
‘Very good,’ said Klerk, sounding rather less amused. ‘So now we three who will be shooting must agree on the stakes. What do you say, Sam, how about the two losers each give the winner ten thousand US?’
‘If you like,’ said Carver, unenthusiastically.
‘Not enough for you? What if we make it fifty grand each?’
‘Honestly, Wendell, can’t you see Sam’s not interested in money?’ Zalika said.
‘He was the last time I paid him.’
‘Well of course, that was business,’ Zalika insisted. ‘But if we want to get him interested today, it has to be something more personal. Now, I seem to remember that yesterday he called me, and I quote, a “screwed-up schoolgirl who’s got bugger-all training, experience or competence for this kind of work”. Sorry, Sam, but that’s not the sort of thing a girl forgets in a hurry. So my wager is this. I bet you can’t beat little schoolgirl me in a straightforward head-to-head shooting match. And I’m not going to put any money on it because I know that if you, the great Samuel Carver, action hero extraordinaire, can’t shoot better than a helpless, weak and feeble female, you’ll lose something – well, a couple of things, actually – that say more about you than cash ever can.’
‘Ahahaha!’ Klerk burst out laughing. ‘You’re really putting your balls on the line here, my man! Don’t be fooled by this kid. She’s a Stratten. She was blasting away all over the family estates when she was still in nappies.’
‘You’re on,’ said Carver.
Zalika smiled. ‘Excellent.’
One by one the others drifted away until Carver and Zalika were alone in the room. She sat herself down next to him and pulled her chair right over to his. Then she leaned forward so close it seemed to Carver that her sea-blue eyes were not just looking at him but through him, and very softly said, ‘If you want to take me, you’ll have to beat me first. And believe me, Carver, I won’t make it easy.’
33
The open trucks came rumbling down the dirt track that snaked between the rolling hills of south-central Malemba, throwing up a choking cloud of parched red earth over the tightly packed huddles of fearful, half-starved men, women and children crammed into their cargo bays. A horn blared from the leading vehicle and a uniformed soldier with sergeant’s stripes on his arm and his eyes hidden behind fluorescent yellow-framed sunglasses got out of the driver’s cabin. He slammed the door behind him and lifted his AK-47 assault rifle one-handed into the air. He fired off a volley of shots then shouted, ‘Move! Move! Clear the way!’
Ahead of him the track was blocked by more people: a horde that stretched away to either side, covering the rolling ground as far as the eye could see. There were more than thirty thousand of them, covering a barren wasteland that had once been occupied by flourishing crops and cattle made sleek and contented by lush green grass. Camps like this had sprung up all over the country, filled by families ejected from rural villages, estates seized from their white owners and urban neighbourhoods, just like Severn Road, that had dared to vote against Henderson Gushungo. Officially, the forced eviction and transportation of hundreds of thousands of people was known as resettlement. In reality, it was more like a form of ethnic cleansing, except that Gushungo terrorized members of his own tribe as willingly as he did those from other social and ethnic groups. Once moved, the people were simply dumped, without food, water or shelter, and left to fend for themselves. That they were doing so on land that belonged to other Malembans did not concern Henderson Gushungo in any way at all.
A two-storey house, constructed of breezeblocks with a corrugated iron roof, stood like an island in this ocean of humanity, some fifty metres from where the trucks had stopped. All around it, wisps of smoke rose from smouldering cooking-fires and women sat before huts and tents cobbled together from whatever scraps of rag, wood and corrugated iron they or their men could find. Here and there small children with legs like fragile twigs and bellies as swollen as honeydew melons tried to play. But they had no energy to run or jump; no toys for imaginary tea-parties or battles; no light in their round, enquiring eyes.