The White Lioness (17 page)

"Here," Konovalenko said. "This house has been carefully chosen."

"By whom?"

"Those whose job it was," Konovalenko said.

Questions not triggered directly by what Konovalenko said annoyed him. "There are no neighbours around here, and the wind blows all the time. Nobody will hear a thing. Let's go back to the living room. Before we start working I want to review the situation with you."

They sat opposite each other in two old, worn leather chairs.

"It's very simple," Konovalenko said. "First, this liquidation will be the most difficult of your career. Not only because there's a technical complication, the distance, but second and most important, because failure is simply not an option. You will have only one opportunity. The final plan will be decided at very short notice. You will have only a little time to get everything organised, and no time for hesitation or contemplating alternatives. The fact that you have been chosen doesn't only mean you are thought to be skilful and cold-blooded. You also work best on your own. In this case you'll be more alone than you've ever been. Nobody can help you, nobody will acknowledge you, nobody will support you. Third, there is a psychological dimension to this assignment which shouldn't be underestimated. You won't discover who your victim is until the very last moment. You will need to be totally cold-blooded. You know that the person you are going to liquidate is a figure of the first rank. That means you're spending a lot of time wondering who it is. But you won't know almost until you've got your finger on the trigger."

Mabasha was irritated by Konovalenko's patronising tone. For a fleeting moment he wanted to tell him he already knew who the victim would be. But he said nothing.

"I can tell you, we had you in the KGB records," Konovalenko said with a smile. "If my memory serves me right we had you down as a useful lone wolf. Unfortunately we can no longer check that because all the archives have been destroyed or are in a state of chaos."

Konovalenko fell silent and seemed to be reflecting on the proud secret service organisation that no longer existed. But the silence didn't last long.

"We don't have much time," Konovalenko said. "That doesn't need to be a negative factor. It will force you to concentrate. The days will be divided between target practice with the rifle, psychological exercises, and working on the various possible liquidation scenarios. Moreover, I gather you are not used to driving. I'll be sending you out in a car for a few hours every day."

"They drive on the right in this country," Mabasha said. "In South Africa we drive on the left."

"Exactly," Konovalenko said. "That should help sharpen your reflexes. Any questions?"

"Lots of questions," Mabasha said. "But I realise I'll only get answers to a few of them."

"Quite right," Konovalenko said.

"How did Kleyn get hold of you? He hates communists. And as a KGB man, you were a communist. Maybe you still are."

"You don't bite the hand that feeds you," Konovalenko said. "Being a member of a secret security service is a question of loyalty to the people in power. You could of course find a few ideologically sound communists in the KGB at any given time. But the vast majority were professionals who carried out the assignments given them."

"That doesn't explain your contact with Kleyn."

"If you suddenly lose your job, you start looking for work," Konovalenko said. "Unless you prefer to shoot yourself. South Africa has always seemed to me and to many of my colleagues a well-organised and disciplined country. Never mind the uncertainty there now. I offered my services through channels that already existed between our respective intelligence agencies. Evidently, I had the qualifications to interest Mr Kleyn. We made a deal. I agreed to take care of you for a few days - for a price."

"How much?"

"No money," Konovalenko said. "But I do get the possibility of emigrating to South Africa and certain guarantees regarding the possibility of work in the future."

Importing murderers, Mabasha thought. But of course, that is a clever thing to do from Kleyn's point of view. I might well have done the same myself.

Konovalenko sprang from the leather chair with surprising agility.

"The mist has dispersed," he said. "The wind is up. We should start getting acquainted with the rifle."

Mabasha would recall the days that followed in the isolated house where the wind was always keening as a long-drawn-out wait for a catastrophe that was bound to happen. Yet when it actually came, it was not in the form he had expected. Everything ended up in chaos, and even when he was making his escape he still did not understand what had happened.

The days appeared to be going according to plan. Mabasha quickly mastered the rifle. He practised shooting in prone, sitting, and standing positions in a vast field behind the house. At the end of the field there was a sandbank against which Konovalenko had set targets. Mabasha shot at footballs, cardboard faces, an old suitcase, a radio, saucepans, coffee trays and other objects he couldn't even identify. Every time he pulled the trigger, he was given a report on the outcome via a walkie-talkie, and made very slight adjustments to the sights. Slowly, the rifle began to obey Mabasha's commands.

The days were divided into three sections, separated by meals prepared by Konovalenko. Mabasha was persuaded that Konovalenko knew exactly what he was doing, and was very good at passing on what he knew. Kleyn had chosen the right man.

The feeling of imminent catastrophe came from another direction altogether. It was Konovalenko's attitude towards him, the black contract killer. For as long as he could bear to, Mabasha overlooked the scornful tone of everything Konovalenko said, but in the end it was more than he could tolerate. When his Russian master drank too much vodka after dinner, his contempt became blatant. There were never any direct racial aspersions to give Mabasha an excuse to react. But that only made things worse.

If things went on like this he would be provoked to kill Konovalenko, even though doing so would make his situation impossible.

When they were sitting in their leather armchairs for the psychological sessions, Mabasha noticed that Konovalenko assumed he was totally ignorant about the most basic human reactions. As a means of defusing his growing hatred, Mabasha decided to play the role he had been given. He pretended to be stupid, made the most irrelevant comments he could think of, and observed how delighted Konovalenko was to see his prejudices confirmed.

At night, the singing hounds howled in his ears. Sometimes he woke up and imagined Konovalenko leaning over him with a gun in his hand, but there was never anybody there, and he would lie awake until dawn.

The only breathing space he had were his daily car rides. There were two cars in an outbuilding, one of which, a Mercedes, was meant for him. Konovalenko used the other car for errands, whose purpose he never alluded to.

Mabasha drove around on minor roads, found his way to a town called Ystad and explored some roads along the coast. These excursions helped him to hold out. One night he left his room and counted the portions of frozen food in the freezer: they would be one more week in this isolated place.

I'll have to put up with it, he thought. Kleyn requires me to suffer whatever I have to suffer to earn my million rand.

He assumed Konovalenko was in daily touch with South Africa, and that the transmissions were made while he was out in the car. He was also confident that Konovalenko would be sending only good reports to Kleyn.

But the feeling of impending disaster would not abate. Every hour that passed brought him closer to breaking point, to the moment when his nature would require him to kill Konovalenko. He would be forced to do it so as not to offend his ancestors, and not to lose his self-respect.

But it did not happen as he had expected.

They were in the living room one day at about 4 p.m., and Konovalenko was talking about the problems and opportunities associated with carrying out a liquidation from various kinds of rooftops.

Suddenly he stiffened. At the same time, Mabasha heard a car approaching and coming to a halt. They sat motionless, listening. A car door opened, then shut. Konovalenko, who always carried his pistol, a simple Luger, in one of his tracksuit pockets, rose quickly to his feet and slipped the safety catch.

"Move so you can't be seen from the window," he said.

Mabasha did as he was told. He crouched down by the open fire. Konovalenko carefully opened a door into the overgrown orchard, closed it behind him, and was gone.

Mabasha did not know how long he had been crouching behind the fire. But he was still there when the pistol shot rang out like the crack of a whip. He straightened up cautiously and looked out of a window at Konovalenko bending over something at the front of the house. He went out.

There was a woman lying on her back on the damp gravel. Konovalenko had shot her through the head.

"Who is she?" Mabasha said.

"How should I know?" Konovalenko said. "But she was alone in the car."

"What did she want?"

Konovalenko shrugged and replied as he closed the dead woman's eyes with his foot. Mud from the sole of his shoe stuck to her face. "She asked for directions," he said. "She must have taken a wrong turning."

Mabasha could never decide whether it was the bits of mud from Konovalenko's shoe on the woman's face, or the fact that she had been killed just for asking directions that finally settled his resolve to kill Konovalenko. Now he had one more reason: the man's unrestrained cruelty.

Killing a woman for asking the way was something he would never be able to do. Nor could he close a dead person's eyes by putting his foot on their face.

"You're crazy," he said.

Konovalenko raised his eyebrows in surprise. "What else could I have done?"

"You could have said you didn't know where the road was that she was looking for."

Konovalenko put his pistol back in his pocket. "You still don't understand," he said. "We don't exist. We'll be disappearing from here in a few days, and everything must be as if we had never been here."

"She was only asking directions," Mabasha said again, and he could feel he was starting to sweat with excitement. "There has to be a reason for killing a human being."

"Get back in the house," Konovalenko said. "I'll take care of it."

He watched from the window as Konovalenko backed the woman's car up to the body and put it in the boot before driving off.

He was back again in barely an hour. He came walking along the dirt track.

"Where is she?" Mabasha said.

"Buried," Konovalenko said.

"And the car?"

"Also buried."

"That didn't take long."

Konovalenko put the coffee pot on the stove. He turned to Mabasha with a smile. "Something else for you to learn," he said. "No matter how well organised you are, the unexpected is always liable to happen. But that's precisely why such detailed planning is necessary. If you are well organised, you can improvise. If not, the unexpected intervention is liable to cause confusion."

Konovalenko turned back to the coffee pot.

I'll kill him, Mabasha thought. When all this is over, when we're ready to go our separate ways, I'll kill him. There's no going back now.

That night he could not sleep. Through the wall, he could hear Konovalenko snoring. Kleyn will understand, he thought. He is like me. He wants everything to be clear cut and well planned. He hates brutality, hates senseless violence. By my killing President de Klerk he wants to put an end to all the pointless killing in South Africa today. A monster like Konovalenko must never be granted asylum in our country. A monster must never be given permission to enter paradise on earth.

Three days later Konovalenko announced they were ready to move on. "I've taught you all I can," he said. "And you've mastered the rifle. You know how to think once you're told who will soon be in the cross hairs of your sights. You know how to think when you're planning the final details of the assassination. It's time for you to go back home."

"There's one thing I've been wondering," Mabasha said. "How am I going to get the rifle to South Africa with me?"

"You won't be travelling together, of course," Konovalenko said, not bothering to disguise his contempt for what seemed to him such an idiotic question. "We'll use another method of transport. You don't need to know what."

"I have another question," Mabasha said. "The pistol. I haven't even had a test shot, not a single one."

"You don't need one," Konovalenko said. "It's for you, if you fail. It's a gun that can never be traced."

Wrong, Mabasha thought. I'm never going to point that gun at my own head. I'm going to use it on you.

That evening Konovalenko got drunker than Mabasha had ever seen him. He sat across from him at the table, staring at him with bloodshot eyes.

What is he thinking about, Mabasha wondered. Has that man ever experienced love? If I were a woman, what would it be like to share a bed with him? The thought made him uneasy. He pictured the dead woman on the gravel.

"You have many faults," Konovalenko said, intuiting his train of thought, "but the biggest is that you are sentimental."