Vicious Circle (62 page)

‘There is not enough money in this world, Carl,’ Hector told him regretfully and he turned back as Paul Stowe finished strapping Johnny’s huge carcass into the chair.

‘You will need all the men with you to help you to carry this great lump of lard down to the airfield. However, he won’t wake up for another three hours so you shouldn’t have too much trouble with him. Paddy, Nastiya and I will take Carl Bannock where he is going. We will probably catch up with you before you reach the Condor, but if we don’t then load Johnny on board and have the pilots wait for us. We won’t be far behind you.’ He slapped Paul’s shoulder. ‘Away with you, then!’

He waited while they manhandled the improvised stretcher through the antechamber and up the stairs into the tunnel. Then he went back to where Carl lay.

‘What are the names of your pet crocodiles, Carl? Please remind me.’

‘No, you can’t do this to me. Listen to me. I can explain. You don’t understand. I had to do it. Sacha and Bryoni were the ones who sent me to prison. My father deserted me, and so did my mother.’ He was gabbling incoherently, a rush of jumbled words. At the same time he was weeping and holding up his hands to Hector. ‘Mercy! Please have mercy. I’ve suffered enough. Look at my legs. I’ll never walk again.’

‘Hannibal, that’s it!’ Hector snapped his fingers as he pretended to remember. ‘Hannibal and Aline. Shall we go down into the gardens and you can introduce us to Hannibal and Aline?’

Suddenly Jo Stanley’s voice spoke over the radio. It was shrill with outrage. ‘Hector, I am copying every word of yours. You cannot do this thing you are planning. No matter how guilty he is, you cannot kill him out of hand. You will be sinking to his level. You will be committing a crime against all the laws of God and man. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. What you are contemplating is savage and barbaric.’

Hector spoke into his mike and his voice was crisp and sharp as he replied. ‘Sorry, Jo darling. We are very busy this end. Can’t talk now. Over and out!’ He switched off his Birkin and gestured to Paddy to do the same. Once they were both off the air he said to Paddy, ‘Let’s stop fiddling about, and get the job finished.’ He grabbed Carl’s wrist and twisted it up between his shoulder blades. Paddy did the same with his other arm. Nastiya squatted down and with a cable tie bound Carl’s hands behind his back.

Then the two men lifted Carl onto his knees and dragged him up the stairs into the tunnel. Nastiya followed them, carrying their weapons.

They carried Carl through the labyrinth with his legs swinging under him. Carl kept babbling out his remorse and supplications for forgiveness and mercy, interspersed with shrieks of agony as his dragging feet caught and one of his legs twisted violently, bone grating on bone.

They reached the postern gate and emerged from it. Once more in the sunlight they paused to catch their breath and gaze about them. Hector looked up at the walls of the castle high above them. The tunnel leading out of the dungeons had burrowed under them and they were now in the gardens.

‘You and Johnny have done a great job here,’ Hector congratulated Carl. ‘You have turned this place into a paradise. What a pity that you won’t be around to enjoy it much longer.’

The airfield lay below them and they could see Paul and his men carrying Johnny down the winding road towards it.

They turned away and followed the contour of the hillside until they rounded a buttress of black volcanic rock and the water gardens opened out ahead of them. The fountains wove creaming patterns of spray against the high blue of the African sky. And the waterfalls cascaded down the black rock face, spilling into the pools and subterranean funnels on their return to the great lake that lay like a gleaming silver shield far below where they stood.

They went on through stands of giant ferns and strelitzia, festooned with exotic blossoms the colour and shape of birds of paradise. At last they reached the stone coping around the top of the crocodile pen. Carl Bannock’s cries of pain and his pleas for mercy and forgiveness dried up as Hector and Paddy laid him over the coping on his belly. Paddy held his legs to prevent him toppling head-first over the wall and falling twenty feet into the green pool below. Hector leaned over the coping beside him.

On the sandbank that curved around the far edge of the green pool the two crocodiles were sunning themselves. Hannibal’s huge jaws were opened to their full gape to allow a small white egret to perch on his lower lip and peck greedily at the shiny black leeches that had fastened themselves to his gums. Aline lay close beside him, as motionless as though she were carved from stone. Her eyes were bright and as implacable as polished onyx behind their transparent nictitating eyelids.

‘Have you ever wondered what your sister experienced as she was being eaten alive by animals, Carl?’ Hector asked quietly. Carl made a choking sound. ‘Well, you are about to find out, aren’t you?’ Hector went on. ‘Do you know what it feels like to lose somebody you love, Carl?’ Then he answered his own question. ‘No, of course you don’t. You have never loved anybody but yourself.

‘I know what it feels like. I lost my wife. You knew my wife, didn’t you, Carl? Yes, of course you did. I want you to tell me my wife’s name.’ Carl was silent and Hector glanced back at Paddy.

‘We have to jog his memory, Paddy. Give his leg a twist, please.’ Paddy twisted hard and Carl screamed.

‘Let’s start again, Carl,’ Hector said. ‘What was my wife’s name?’

‘Hazel. Her name was Hazel.’

‘Thank you, Carl. Now please don’t say anything more. I want that name to be the last word you ever utter.’ Hector nodded at Paddy and he seized Carl’s ankles and lifted them high, tipping him head-first over the edge of the wall. Carl hit the water and went under. He came up again spluttering and choking.

On the sandbank Hannibal snapped his jaws closed and the egret rose shrieking into the air and flapped away across the tops of the strelitzias. Hannibal hoisted his vast bulk up onto his stubby legs and waddled to the edge of the pool. He launched himself into the turbid water. Aline followed him closely.

‘Does this make you feel better, Hector?’ Nastiya asked as they watched the carnage from above.

‘No, Nazzy. Nothing will ever make me feel better. Nothing will ever still the ache deep down inside of me.’ He stepped back from the wall and turned away. The other two fell in on either side of him, and all three of them broke into a run and went down the hill to where the Condor stood at the head of the runway, ready for take-off.

Bernie and Nella saw them coming and started the engines of the Condor. Then they taxied the huge machine up the ramp of the protective laager and stopped at the head of the runway.

*

As soon as the trio mounted the loading ramp and were safely in the cargo hold of the Condor, Bernie raised the ramp and Nella called over the PA system, ‘Welcome back on board, Hector. Please find the nearest seat and get yourself strapped in. We are going for an immediate take-off.’

Hector led the way forward and as he entered the pressurized passage compartment he saw that it was crowded. There were three body bags containing the corpses of the men they had lost laid out on the deck. Beside them were the casevac stretchers with the wounded strapped into them. The mountainous bulk of Johnny Congo was still strapped into the teak chair with his head lolling on his chest. Paul Stowe had taken the precaution of covering him with a nylon cargo net.

‘I didn’t want to take a chance, sir. I didn’t want him to wake up and wreck the plane and all of us in it. But even a bull elephant wouldn’t be able to break out of that net.’

‘Good man!’ Hector voiced his approval.

‘I kept those seats for you at the front of the cabin.’ He pointed forward.

‘Where is Jo Stanley?’ Hector asked him.

‘I think she is in the galley, in the jump seat behind the toilet.’

The Condor took off and turned onto a northerly heading. They climbed up through the cloud cover to cruise altitude, and Bernie switched off the seat-belt sign. As soon as this happened Hector stood up and went through the curtains into the galley. Jo was sitting alone in the jump seat beside the window. She looked wan and melancholy. She looked up at him and he smiled at her. She turned her head away to stare out of the window. He pulled down the jump seat beside her and sat down.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Don’t you feel like talking?’

‘Not particularly,’ she answered, still without looking at him.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said and folded his arms. They sat for a while, and it was Jo who broke the silence.

‘I never want to hear what you did to him.’

‘Who are we discussing? Is it the man who murdered Hazel, and who plotted the murder of Catherine Cayla?’

She did not reply, but continued staring out the window. Then he realized she was weeping. He touched her shoulder gently, but she pulled away from his hand.

‘Please go away and leave me alone,’ she sobbed.

‘Do you mean go away, as in go away for ever?’

‘Yes!’ she said and he stood up and started back towards the passenger cabin.

‘No!’ She stopped him. ‘Don’t go.’

He stopped and turned back to face her. ‘Yes or no? What is it to be, Jo?’

‘You murdered him.’

‘Murdered or executed? Our world often hangs on the precise meaning of a single word, Jo.’

‘You did not have the right, Hector! You went far beyond law and decency.’

‘What law are we discussing, Jo? Is it the law of Al-Qisas, the law of retaliation laid down in the Torah in Exodus and endorsed by the Prophet Muhammad in the Koran?’

‘I am talking about the law of America, the law which I practise and hold dear.’ She was still weeping, and he had to steel himself to oppose her.

‘Yet you call me a murderer. You have judged me already, but the law of America which you practise says that I am innocent until you prove me guilty.’

‘Yes, there is doubt. But you are going to kill Johnny Congo next. I overheard you boasting about it on the radio. If you do that, Hector, I will never be able to bring myself to forgive you. I will never be able to stay with you.’

‘You want me to turn Congo loose? Is that what you are asking me to do?’

‘I did not say that.’ She denied it vehemently. ‘I want you to surrender him to the law. Hand him over to the American justice system, which has already proven him guilty and passed sentence upon him.’

She jumped to her feet and seized both his hands. ‘Please, Hector! Please, my darling, for my sake. No, do this for both our sakes. Then we can go on together.’

He stared into her eyes for a long time, before he nodded stiffly. ‘Very well, then.’ But his lips were tight, and his voice was tortured with the effort it cost him to say it. ‘I give Johnny Congo to you as the proof of my love. Do with him as you will.’

*

The US Justice Department sent a Grumman business jet from Washington DC to Abu Zara international airport. There were four US Marshals on board with a warrant for the arrest and detention of John Congo.

By royal dispensation, the handover took place in the hangar in which the Emir of Abu Zara kept his fleet of private aircraft.

The American Marshals were all big athletic-looking men with cropped hairstyles. They were lined up before the open fuselage door of the Grumman. They wore dark civilian suits, but Hector’s practised eye noticed the bulges in their left armpits made by the holstered sidearms they carried. He saw the distinctive shape of the steel toe-caps in their polished black shoes.

These are a bunch of tough cookies,
Hector decided as with Paddy and eight of the Cross Bow operatives they marched Johnny into the hangar. Johnny shuffled along in leg irons and his arms were secured behind his back with steel handcuffs. The handover was quick and unceremonious. The head Marshal handed Hector an official US Government receipt, then shook his hand and murmured a few words of thanks. He nodded at his colleagues and two of them stepped forward and seized Johnny’s elbows. They dragged him towards the open door of the jet.

Suddenly Johnny turned and started back to confront Hector. Despite the handcuffs and the leg irons, the two burly Marshals were unable to restrain him. Johnny dragged them along with him. He was bellowing a stream of such filthy language as impressed even Hector and his hard-boiled Cross Bow operatives.

He came straight at Hector. His nose was still swollen and distorted from the punch that Hector had given him.

‘It was me gave the order to kill your fucking whore wife…’ he shouted, and he was close enough for Hector to feel his spittle on his cheek. He dropped his head to smash it into Hector’s face. Hector was anticipating just this. He was balanced on his toes; it was the perfect set-up. He put all his weight behind the blow. He knew before he even made contact that it was the best punch he had ever thrown. It landed on the precise point of Johnny’s jaw.

Even Johnny’s massive neck muscles could not prevent his head being snapped around to the full extent of its rotation. He went down like a black avalanche and lay motionless on the hangar floor. There was a sudden and complete silence. It was broken by the senior US Marshal.

‘Holy cow, mister. You’re good! That was one of the best shots I’ve ever seen,’ he said and came to shake Hector’s hand again, but this time with feeling.

‘Take him away, and give him the hot needle,’ Hector told him.

‘That is the plan, sir,’ the Marshal agreed.

Five days later Hector received a phone call from Ronnie Bunter to let him know that the new date that had been set by the high court for Johnny Congo’s execution was 15 October, three weeks ahead.

*

The threat to Catherine Cayla’s life had been completely removed at last. They could return to normal life. Hector and Jo took Catherine and her nurses with them when they left Abu Zara and flew back to London.

The mews house was perfect and London was even better. There were restaurants and clubs that Jo had only read about, so she had to be educated. She had very few clothes with her, so they did not need an excuse to go shopping for her in Bond Street and Sloane Street. Jo had never even held a fly rod in her hand before. She had heard about Atlantic salmon, but as a Texan she had never seen one.