Old Enemies (3 page)

‘You know our position on corruption,’ the Minister had insisted casually, reaching for a biscuit.

‘Ah, yes, you mean the corruption that permits rich businessmen to buy votes in the British Parliament and in every corner of the US Congress?’ Chombo had replied softly. For a big man he could speak very softly, which somehow made the words shout all the more loudly.

‘I’m not interested in an empty debate, Mr Chombo. You know what I mean. Your country has a dark past in such matters.’ Then the Englishman had hesitated. Even Micklethwaite had to admit it was a clumsy turn of phrase. Biscuit crumbs fell carelessly down his shirtfront.

‘And a dark future, I assure you,’ Chombo had replied, smiling yet again, deflecting the tension as he rubbed the skin on the back of his hand. ‘But you must understand the way we do things in this country. Zimbabwe is desperately poor. Many live on the edge of starvation. Sometimes the only thing of value they possess is their vote. And if they give it, they expect something in return.’

‘And we expect something in return, too,’ Micklethwaite had replied.

The white man hadn’t changed, still played the imperialist, using what he called humanitarian aid as a hammer to beat former colonies into submission all over again. Mugabe had been right about that, at least, even if he had made a total fuck-up of the potholes.

Since that conversation Micklethwaite had been sacked and replaced by yet another damp palm, but it would make no difference, the British still danced to the tune of the American organ-grinder, who knew nothing of Africa. And yet Americans believed in self-help, so what better way of confronting his current problem, Chombo thought, than to use other white men. Like these two standing on the rush mat in front of him. Security consultants. The expensive name for mercenaries.

The ceiling fan turned idly above their heads, and from nearby a pair of hornbills, spooked by a guard, screeched in alarm. The two consultants stood patiently. Chombo didn’t offer them refreshment or invite them to sit.

‘You have discussed matters with Takere?’ he asked.

‘Yes. And what has been suggested is pointless,’ the shorter man replied.

Takere’s eyes, tired and bloodshot, flared in agitation, but he said nothing. He sensed he was out of his depth, that it might be wise to tread water for a while.

‘Look, you want to . . .
change the mind
of an important newspaper owner in London, and in something of a hurry,’ the mercenary continued. ‘Well, there’s no point in offering him money, he has plenty. If his office burns down, it will still make no difference, he will move into a new one. And if, as Mr Takere has suggested, he were to meet with a tragic accident . . .’ The mercenary spread his hands wide and shrugged. ‘He would simply be replaced by others. You do not change a man’s mind by smashing in his skull.’

Chombo considered the point, breathing deeply to massage his thoughts. ‘Then what is it that you suggest?’

‘We
distract
him. Give him something else to think about. It’s difficult for a man to know where his mind is when you are
ripping
out his heart.’ The man had a way of emphasizing the letter ‘r’, rolling it around his tongue in a manner that gave his words added menace.

Takere began cracking his knuckles in confusion, but Chombo thought he was keeping pace. ‘His wife, you mean?’

The mercenary shook his head. ‘No, not that. They live in London, it’s sewn up as tight as an antelope’s arse with all their anti-terrorist precautions. And if he has any sense he’ll have a security company taking care of his home, fitted it with panic alarms, CCTV, that sort of thing. There could be regular patrols, maybe bodyguards. They might even have constructed a secure room inside. No, to break an operation like that would be very difficult, take time. And time, so your Mr Takere tells me, is one thing you don’t have.’

Chombo didn’t bother to dispute the point.

‘Anyhow,’ the white man continued, ‘he may not even like his wife.’

A smile spread slowly across the President’s face. It took considerably longer to reach his eyes, which remained fixed on the other man, who wasn’t like the last pair of ‘consultants’ Takere had brought him – Englishmen, who’d been halfway up his backside trying to establish parking rights before the draught from the door had time to settle, which was why they had been thrown out just as quickly. But Chombo’s instincts told him that the one with frozen eyes was different. Very practical.

‘Yes, as you say, there are many problems, so many problems,’ the President said. ‘But I have a suspicion that you have brought with you a solution. An expensive one.’

‘It will be double the fee that was originally indicated. Half up front, the remainder as soon as the operation is underway, and an additional ten per cent for operating costs every month it continues. No payment, or late payment, or part payment – and we walk.’

Suddenly Takere came back to life, beginning to understand that these two men had played him like a fish. ‘We said only a third up front, with the final instalment only afterwards, when the job is completed.’

‘We are all of us in this for high stakes, putting our necks on the line. “Afterwards”? What is “afterwards”? I may not be around to collect, while you, Mr Takere, might not be around to pay.’

Takere looked in uncertainty towards his President, waiting for his cue to throw these cheating bastards out into the mud.

‘So how is it that you propose to distract him?’ Chombo asked.

‘Not through his wife.’

‘Then . . . ?’

‘His child. At school in Switzerland.’

‘Ah! The snow. It hides many things,’ Chombo replied softly.

‘There’s a lot of it in Switzerland.’

‘We should have more snow in Africa.’

And so it was that Casey’s fate had been sealed. She wasn’t the child of the newspaper owner Chombo was so desperate to get at – that was a kid named Ruari. It was simply Casey’s misfortune to be his friend, and to be in the way.

It had been an easy affair to fall into. He was the busy entrepreneur, rich in ideas and public principles but deficient in funds, and very much up for the statutory midlife meander, while she was the money woman, self-sufficient, predatory, with exceptional legs that most men imagined in any number of contortions yet which had the capacity to escape from a situation more rapidly than even the most carefully crafted excuse. City Woman. And the two lovers had superb cover. He was the proprietor of
Newsday
, a newspaper in the middle rank of the British market, while she was a vice-president of the paper’s main bank and creditor. Being seen together was as inevitable as the process of attraction was predictable, leading from extravagant lunches to more understated dinners, then on to her house on Blackheath Common – ‘an excellent investment,’ he had mused, following her that first time up the staircase to the bedroom.

Nothing too heavy, except the sex, which was brilliant. No emotional baggage, no demands for exclusivity, no deep entanglement, just a gentle distraction in a life that for him was throwing up more questions than he could cover with answers. Sometimes a man in his overweight forties needed to know he could still do it.

Like most of these very private entertainments, the matter fell into a pattern, one that she was mostly responsible for providing. Candles, atmosphere, crystal glasses to catch the soft light, things that could be thrown together in the time it took him to retrieve something cold and indulgent from her fridge. But this evening there had been no adornments, just sex, and in a manner suggesting her mind was elsewhere. It didn’t bother him overly, not until he was finished and left wondering whether she had even started.

‘Penny for them?’ he asked, reaching for his glass.

‘A penny?’ She turned to stare at him, pillowing her head on her hands.

‘OK,’ he smiled, his eyes sliding slowly over her body and widening with appreciation, ‘name your price.’

The smile wasn’t returned. ‘There isn’t one.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You’ll get a letter tomorrow declining your request to extend your credit facilities.’

‘What?’ The sudden tremor in his body caused a trickle of wine to spill over his chest, but he didn’t seem to notice.

‘The bank won’t do it any more.’

‘But you can’t . . .’ It would be like dropping him on the surface of the moon without oxygen. ‘That would destroy me. You know that.’

‘The bank has decided that the newspaper sector isn’t one we want to play in any more.’

‘But you
are
the bank!’

‘Not really. You know how these things work.’

He tried to turn to face her but his feet were tangled in the duvet. As he tried to wriggle himself free, he noticed there were goose bumps on her skin and her nipples had become rock hard. This is what she got off on. He’d always known, it was her reputation, and yet . . .

‘So this – tonight. One final fling. Just business?’ he gasped.

She looked at him curiously, as though for the first time. ‘Hasn’t it always been?’

There were times when Harry Jones was fed up with being a politician. He seemed always to be in a hurry, no time to sit back and take stock – reconnoitring, he would have called it in his old army days, finding out where you were and what lay ahead before you rushed in and got important bits of you blown away. Not that it had saved him, of course. You weren’t always given the time to consider what should happen next, sometimes you just had to get on with it. That’s where experience came in, and he had a lifetime of that, enough to let him know he wasn’t immortal, just lucky, at least so far. He took none of it for granted, which was why he hated wasting time, standing still, doing nothing. Like now. He was nudging elbows, queuing for Passport Control at Heathrow’s Terminal Three and growing increasingly restless. It wasn’t as if he had anyone waiting for him on the other side, yet still he fretted.

The disgorged passengers shuffled forward more slowly than ever but even here, in the midst of a crowd, Harry found it impossible to hide. He had only just turned on his iPhone and already it was vibrating, demanding his attention. His punishment for taking almost a week off.

It hadn’t even been a holiday. Harry had been to the States to get himself a new right ear – he’d left a substantial chunk of the old one back in central Asia during a heated disagreement with a man wielding a scalpel. It wasn’t that he minded scars too much, which was fortunate because he’d amassed a considerable collection from the various wars, riots and revolutions he’d been involved with; he’d even managed to pick up the odd one or two during several hard-fought election campaigns. But if you were carrying scars, he argued, it meant you were still walking, which was more than could be said for some of the men and women he had left behind along the way. Yet as a politician he preferred voters to look him in the eye rather than stare at his ear, so he’d decided to get himself a new one, and only in America could you do that.

Some remarkable people at a medical research facility in New Jersey had grown him a new ear on the back of a genetically modified mouse, and he’d even got to show it off to the new President, Alexander Munroe. That hadn’t been part of the plan, but Harry had a close friend in the President’s National Security Adviser, Charley Ebinger, and the three of them, along with an admiral turned intelligence chief and a portly man with cherry-red cheeks who turned out to be the President’s personal cardiologist, had wound up around the dinner table in the private quarters of the White House. A boys’ night in, accompanied by overdone filet mignon and wine from the President’s old congressional district in California. President Munroe was the antithesis of his predecessor – white, West Coast, a man who had risen through the glue pot of Washington by doing ‘damn’ little, damn’ well’, which most voters had found a relief after the intensity of the Obama years. He was also a man of boundless curiosity. They’d been a couple of bottles in with Munroe about to make some profound remark when he had noticed Harry’s ear, still healing from the surgery.

‘Mr Jones, you had some kind of disagreement with Mike Tyson?’ the President enquired in his characteristically forthright manner.

‘Just a nick I picked up on my travels. That’s why I’m here in the States, Mr President. A little shopping. New ear. You approve?’ Harry pulled back his hair to allow a more formal inspection.

‘They sell those things in Walmart?’

‘It’s straight out of the laboratory. The product of one of your own government programmes for the treatment of military casualties who need new accessories. Arms and legs, mostly, and facial reconstruction, but also the occasional ear.’

‘So how did you get to lose the earlier model?’

Munroe was the most powerful man in the world, capable of reshaping it or breaking it apart, but he knew he was a desk warrior and envied men like Harry who got to see things from the sharp end, and for a while he and the rest of the table became transfixed by the story of Harry’s ear, lost while he had been waging a private war in order to spring a friend from the condemned cell of a distant central Asian republic. ‘The friend was one of yours, sir. From Michigan. A British ear in exchange for an almost whole American. It seemed like a fair deal at the time,’ Harry concluded.