‘Sure. They can stockpile, pray, listen for warnings of attack on the Marnet radio. It won’t help, it’s not a life.’
She sighed. ‘No, but this is the life.’ A long leg, shrink-wrapped in designer jeans, eased outwards.
‘You want to give it up? I don’t.’
‘Me neither.’
‘So, no worries. We’re a vital part of the nation’s economy. They’ve a vested interest in us.’
‘How do we know it’s a healthy one?’ A sideways glance. ‘We’re not indispensable, Jonty.’
In truth, they were disposable. An average contract hit in the region cost less than four hundred dollars – there were many willing hands, numerous trigger-fingers. Some were represented by the hard and scar-faced men crawling undetected through the shrubbery, cutting wires, slipping into the house, unsheathing improvised thrusting blades. They had come from the teeming, seething shanty slums of Manenberg, KTC and Nyanga, from the tin shacks spread across the desolate sand-blasted plain of the Cape Flats. Killers who lived among killers, individuals who swaggered through the sewer-stench of three million dispossessed, who drank and fought, bought power and respect with drugs and bullets and handed down destruction. Today, their journey brought them here.
The sound of the conversation rose and fell like a murmur on the garden. Two whites – young, tanned, unsuspecting – fools who believed they were safe, who chattered without inkling. Eyes watched, curious, hating, inching forward. The male target stretched, threw back his head; the female toyed with her glass. A bullet for every settler, a bullet for every settler … One bad turn deserved another far worse. They were fine specimens, would doubtless put up a fight. It added to the frisson, made the trophy-hunt worthwhile. The raid had taken planning, preparation; it had taken discipline; it had taken courage. This was no drive-by, no chance encounter, no blue-light ambush – pretending to be cops, flagging down and mowing down scared urbanites in their BMWs and sports utilities – this was thrill-seeking, point-scoring, in its highest evolutionary form. There would be shocked screams, wide-eyed pleading, choked sobs, the emotional peaks and troughs rising to glimpsed hope then crashing to abject despair, the offer by the man to take the place of the woman. So gallant, so absurd. As if there were the remotest possibility that one of the captives might escape what was ordained, that gender could determine outcome. Double acts were the best. The couple would play off each other, sustain the cabaret. And there would be blood, so much blood.
A crackle of undergrowth, the head of the Krige boy turning towards the sound, the face draining paler in instant recognition. He understood. It was in the darting of the eyes, the grease sweat, the involuntary shaking, the swallowing down of stomach contents piston-heaving towards the throat. Instant sickness, protracted death. She took longer to comprehend, the brain disengaged, her features strangely still. A kind of baffled innocence emanated, a gentle, cornered animal at bay and at a loss, thrown into a trance by something remembered faintly, something vaguely familiar. Seconds stalled. A blade of steel caught the light, glinted, and the magic broke. They ran, trapped within a diminishing circle, shouting, hemmed in by the advance. The boy threw a chair, attempted to batter his way through with a bench, the girl seized a folded table umbrella and swung it viciously. Grins from her tormentors. This was what they had come for, would come for; this was the meaning of struggle. Nkosi sikelela thina lusapho lwayo … Playtime, quality time, show time. Thrashing arms, legs, teeth biting, connecting. The pack close, the two vanish. High overhead, an African goshawk hangs motionless and pitiless in the air, its eyes searching, its wings ready to fold.
Jonty felt for her hands, found the reaching fingers and gripped. Same existence, separate worlds. She was on the far side of the tree, cuffed to him, invisible, her clothes cut away as his had been, her back scourged. The chain links rattled, her body thudding violently on the trunk. And her nails talon-dug deeper in his flesh. Blind trust. They held on. He wanted to call her, cradle her. He wanted to cry out – to his father, to God, to anyone who might hear. His face was pushed against the bark, tears and dirt like acid in his eyes, the oil rag knotted in his mouth choking off speech. He absorbed her pain, carried his own, would never leave her. The shockwaves rippled through to him, frenzied, her arms pumping as the gang took turns. Leaves were dropping from above. He hoped she would not last long, hoped they would overreach. The chains shook, her suffering a vibrating constant. They were burning him with cigarettes, with lighters. An odd sensation, weird smell, he thought from far away. He had to stay for Vicky, until the end, until her end. Another punch to his kidney, his forehead rammed forward, and they were on him, in him. So unfair, so sordid. Drowsiness was swamping him. So many colours, sensations, in an oxygen-deprived mind, so many permutations to agony, so many aspects to torture. A taste he had never before encountered in his mouth – dying and disappointment combined. He remembered he had yet to give Vicky her present, had momentarily forgotten what it was. She would like it, he was certain. He wondered where his mother was. She must be sleeping. Good idea. His sister let out a small, thin noise. He supposed it was her. There were shouts, and chants, a party going on. At his house too. Nice to be invited. He was falling away, falling into night. Vicky’s grasp slackened. Hell, his wasn’t anything to be proud of. All sing. Nkosi sikelel’iAfrika … Nkosi sikelel’iAfrika … Nkosi sikelel’iAfrika. The kaffir lilies would grow tall and strong this year.
CHAPTER 1
The UK
‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! …’ Ululation, whistles, bellowed snatches of song, the throb of chant and protest, surged down the university corridors, through firedoors, across echoing hallways, and reached the lecture hall as an angry background hum. The room was full, a capacity crowd of students and academics squeezed onto benches and steps, heads bowed in concentration or thrust forward with attentiveness. There was tension, expectation, danger. ‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! …’ the unseen mob shouted.
A man stood alone at the rostrum. Average build, average face, yet his authority was commanding. He spoke fluently, without notes, a figure raised on a stage, a presence protected by a police presence. Three Special Branch officers sat before the platform, cheap-suited from central wardrobe, their arms folded, expressions fixed, sight-lines travelling and trawling the audience, scanning, screening, checking. It was no ordinary day, no ordinary lecture. Professor Duncan Pitt was in town.
‘Let us play word-association,’ he was saying. ‘I will begin. Africa … strife … Sierra Leone … Congo … Angola … Sudan … Somalia … Rwanda … Burundi … Africa – from civilization’s cradle to civilization’s grave … disease, drought, famine, food aid, starvation, bloated stomachs, pandemic Aids, mutilation, boy soldiers, Kalashnikovs – AK-47s, AK-74s – jeeps, silent streets, shanty towns, slums, burnt-out buildings, warlords, tribalism, dictatorship, diamonds, smuggling, corruption, decline, unparalleled resources, wasted chances, total mismanagement … oppression, refugees, genocide … hardship, township, rape as a competitive sport … some three million war dead each decade, around forty million inhabitants with HIV, over two million deaths from it a year, thirty million displaced from their homes by conflict, a combined debt rising to $500 billion, average annual per capita income under $500, life expectancy – fifty, the world’s lowest literacy levels, agricultural production plummeting since independence … Flies on the eyes of live children … flies on the eyes of dead children … Butchery with machetes … Swiss bank accounts … Corpses, corpses, corpses … Endless … endless … endless … and blame directed at anyone, everyone, but themselves.’
Growl had become howl, fury undulating remotely and relentlessly beyond the swing doors and sound-proofed walls. Unperturbed, an iconoclast in grey jacket and polished brown shoes, the walking-talking embodiment of controversy, Pitt continued calmly. He was a veteran of such encounters, supremely indifferent to the sentiments of an unwashed rabble; he kept his cool when others lost theirs, had been barracked and hounded from a hundred campuses, received with insults, eggs, flour, paint or ammonia at countless locations. Unpopularity came with the job, the message, the territory, death threats were a daily adjunct to academic routine – it was all so routine, so predictable. ‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! …’ He was not, of course, but some chose never to listen. His disregard fuelled their rage.
‘The subject – the issues it raises – requires honesty, and honesty informs us that wherever black populations emerge or settle, whether in Africa or the Atlantic rim, insuperable social problems follow. Their middle classes are smaller, their wealth creation lower, their score on societal cost-benefit charts underperforming, relative to any other ethnic grouping. The reasons are glaring to any serious observer: lack of education and application, an inability to train for the professions, a reluctance to respect authority, commit to a family, the ‘gold chains and no brains’ appeal of mainstream ghetto culture. Crass barbarity is lauded by black youth, everything is authenticated by, predicated upon, street machismo and predatory aggression. Academic underachievement is the norm, and – certainly in the United States – jail sentences are almost a rite of passage. Their reliance on welfare is statistically proven, they have offspring at a younger age and in greater quantities because sex and its consequences are free. In short, they commit the majority of street crime in your country, they have higher rates of mental disease, they swell the numbers of a burgeoning underclass …’ He looked around, anticipating the sharp intakes of breath, the unconscious buttock-clenched shuffling of individuals both disturbed and thrilled by the measured trampling of taboos. The voice was lowered. ‘Tell me I am wrong … I have spent much of my working life living either in Africa or America. There is no difference between the brutalization of women throughout Africa, and the violent misogyny driving contemporary rap lyrics. There is no difference between the murderous teenage killer wielding a hatchet in a Central African war-zone and an Uzi-toting Blood standing on a street corner in Los Angeles; there is no difference in the something-for-nothing attitudes that allow a mango to be plucked freely from the ground in West Africa and a pensioner to be held at knife-point in Lambeth, London; there is no difference in the language employed by the self-appointed leaders of the black community in our countries and the explanations given by black African leaders for their nations’ ills. It is rarely their responsibility, it is always empire, slavery, racism, discrimination, victimization, lack of rights. Not once do they put their hands up and say OK, the buck stops here, the fault might lie with us, within us …So, it is my duty today to illustrate a range of those fault lines.’
Lights dimmed, theories and formulae were espoused, reinforced, supported by certainty, backed by PowerPoint charts and diagrams, the unappetizing made digestible. A convincing display of statistics and projections, contentious subjects formatted and packaged for slick presentation, and at its centre, its epicenter, dominating with detail, conducting proceedings with a deft flick of a light-pointer, was Duncan Pitt. He started at the beginning, with ‘The Beginning,’ traced the evolution of man, the migration from southern Africa, the basic tenets of racial divide and racial disparity. Primal man, an early hominid – Homo Habilis – moved north from his African savannah habitat almost two million years before his modern descendant Homo Sapiens appeared. He was upright, bipedal, had a strongly opposable thumb, made stone tools, began to hunt instead of scavenge for roots, berries and carcasses, gained regular access to high-energy bone-marrow protein. He was already an improvement on the original ape-man species, the 4-million-year-old Australopithecus Afarensis and 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus Garhi. Evolution, a virtuous circle, and his ability to think grew. As Africa’s climate became drier and cooler, he gained 50 per cent in brain capacity on his predecessors. Survival required adaptability. For millennia, he developed, changed, learnt, flowed into the incarnation of Homo Erectus, followed the exit route up the Nile valley into Upper Egypt until the first real human – Cro-Magnon – arrived fully formed in Europe a mere 40,000 years before Professor Pitt. Four million years, and a hike in brain size from 400cc to 1200cc. Lucky, for Cro-Magnon was a product of the tropics who faced an age of ice, uncertainty and hardship in the frozen reaches beyond Africa. He had to find shelter, keep warm, pair-bond for efficiency, travel and communicate over distance, receive information, pass on experience and insight, barter, trade, build more complex social structures. Parietic art, sculptures, beads, body ornamentation and basic musical instruments carved from bone – the birth of early culture – blossomed alongside. They reinforced hierarchy, group cohesion and identity, fed imagination and imitation, gave status, aided the growth of religious practice, consciousness and self-reflexive thought. With a voice-box sited lower than Neanderthal, Homo Sapiens could generate a range of sound, would learn to speak: wisdom was transferable, rules and conventions easily applied, tactics discussed, systems of order and defence created. Man thrived.
Then the twist. Pitt’s voice was cool, monochrome. The first major divide in Homo Sapiens occurred 100,000 years before the present time when the African strain split from the non-African. There you had it – the key. While European and Asian man evolved, farmed, exploited minerals and materials, moved away from subsistence, colonized, built cities, pushed at the boundaries of science and learning, fomented agrarian and industrial revolutions, Africa’s denizens progressed no further, remained unchanged. Whatever they touched – pre-colonial or post-colonial – collapsed into tribal struggle and destructive chaos; whatever their trappings, their pretentions, they were incapable of seizing and improving their destinies. Their knowledge was finite, capabilities marred, their limitations spectacular. Not one example, not one state, existed to challenge the pattern. That pattern was founded on a simple, single premise: intelligence. It was a brutal, provable, fact that a direct societal link existed between low IQ and poverty, between low IQ and poor educational performance, between low IQ and unemployment, idleness, injury, crime, welfare dependency, incivility, lack of parenting and citizenship skills, and the collapse of the traditional family structure. There was white trash and there was black trash. But, measured in centiles, and based on American research conducted over several decades, in terms of testable achievement and cognitive ability, whites outperformed almost 80 per cent of blacks. Average white IQ:100; average black IQ: 85. Genetics were at play, the characteristics and the differences inherited by each succeeding generation.
The screen image dissolved; the light came up on Professor Pitt. He rested his hands on the lectern. Thus, he argued, it was clear that just as Africa acted as a drag on the rest of the world, so black groupings transplanted to the northern hemisphere served to slow and debilitate the host societies in which they lived.
‘Afro-American …Afro-Caribbean … Afro-studies … So long as black communities resort to Africa as their touchstone, so long as Africa remains their focus and their fantasy, they will continue to be third-class citizens anchored in a Third World – some might argue third-rate – culture …’ Mengele! Pig! Murderer! Go Home! Pitt should be deported! Scum… Words meandered dully into the auditorium. ‘They might be compared to a recessive, recurring gene – state support, affirmative action, left-wing apologia allowing them to flourish and dominate when otherwise they would fade. It represents the overthrow of Darwinism. Rhythm, drugs, beaded hair, boxing and track athletics have, with the aid of our collective and misplaced guilt, granted them an automatic entry into Western society. I am not sure that we have benefited.’
Murmuring among the audience, the nervous whispers of the admiring and the appalled. Pitt raised an eyebrow. He liked it this way, enjoyed the act of lobbing academic grenades into quiet cloisters and close-packed assemblies. Shock tactics, shock waves made people debate, made them think. Blowing the roof out always let in fresh air. It was what these sheltered idiots needed.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I do not seek to speak for you, only to you. Listen to that noise.’ He paused, allowing the rumble of the outside demonstration to permeate. ‘You hear it? Their vocabulary is limited, their minds are closed, thoughts narrow, views blinkered. And why? Because they are trapped between two monumental walls whose cement is liberal white angst, whose foundations lie with colonialism and the Holocaust. It is time to demolish such artificial constructs, time to move on. Racial differences exist, racial differences matter. Without that core acceptance, there will never … I repeat, never …be a core understanding. I thank you.’
A crash, a disturbance that overflowed and then burst with a chaotic rush into the theatre, the hammering of fists and feet, the charge of scrambling figures who had breached the outer police cordon. Guards and protestors tumbled in a moving riot down the steps, their momentum carried, slowed, bleeding energy, halted, ending in a frenzied maelstrom of wild blows traded and counter-traded beside cowering students. A figure detached itself, dashed for the podium, was tackled, brought down, CS-sprayed and cuffed by two of the Special Branch officers as their colleague prepared to usher the professor away. Screams, jeers, the piling in of more law enforcement. The lecture was over.
Pitt leant towards the microphone. ‘Perhaps you’ll forgive me if I take questions later.’
* * *
They had no volume control, these – things. They had no right to live. Talking, jabbering, shouting with the in-your-face aggression that marked out territory, marked them out, the herd moved and jostled towards the concrete estate. Towards the concrete interment he had prepared, heading for a future set in stone. The beasts of the inner city. Why did they not simply musk-spray the fucking lampposts? There was a conformity in them, in their blank stupid faces and blank stupid clothes, the bovine-inane bellows and bandy-legged, pimp-rolling gait of those who were unaware, too wrapped in the self-importance of anti-authority, anti-anyone, to know what stalked them. Yes, he would skirt them, identify the weakest, pick them off and bring them down. The thrill of the hunt. The chase. He stiffened, paused. A BMW cruised by, its cash-rich occupant on the way to a transaction. So safe in the leather interior, so stereotypical, stereophonic. He scanned the vehicle. No one was safe. The boom-bass thud of speakers pounded into his temples, scrambled his thoughts. Kill …hate … kill … hate … kill … hate … They preached. Their culture, their invention. And he listened. The car moved on. Equilibrium restored. The group crossed the street. Irritable vowel syndrome, their glottal stops and mockney patois shrieked and echoing in the open spaces, in his closed mind. He watched, pacing slowly after them. They should pray – they were prey.
* * *
The eiderdown heap stirred, swore, an arm extending to swipe blindly at the digital alarm that had bleated mercilessly for two full minutes. Shit …The clock fell, bounced and lay face-down in the carpet, its synthesized tones incessant and increasing. A heavy book landed on top of it, but had no effect. Fuck the age of the microchip. Confused, nauseous, his brain paralysed by alcoholic embolism, Josh Kemp crawled into daybreak and lay panting with the effort. He whimpered – it used less energy than a groan – was unsure of where he was, what had happened, whether hangover had tipped irrevocably into genuine stroke. I can’t move my legs an inner voice insisted, before he lost himself in the exertion of decryption. He came round again, died, rallied, the clock shrieking.
Coffee, cranberry juice slopped into a glass with half a teaspoon of powdered methyl sulfonyl methane (MSM), his detox cure-all. More coffee and half an hour later, he slouched naked, head in hands, on the edge of his bed. The belly descent and ascent on the ladder from the master cabin had bled his strength. He could sit like this all day, might have to. There had to be a reason to get up, to get dressed. He rubbed his eyes, wincing as they gained focus, and tried to remember. No use. He slumped. Another attempt; he rose to his feet, balanced and wobbled with the gait of a one-year-old towards the stairwell for the dangerous trip to the bathroom. A converted grain barge moored on the Thames did not lend itself to practicality, to ergonomics. Time dragged, he dragged. Objective reached, he stepped into the shower, turned the taps and revived long enough to regret waking up, regret encountering lukewarm water, regret finding himself at forty-five without direction, without Krista, finding himself at forty-five. Too many regrets. Half-saturated, half-drained, he stumbled back to bed and reverse-rolled himself across the mattress, a pillow clenched to his face. He would lie here awhile, motionless, undisturbed. The clock was in several pieces.
‘I appear to have walked in on a mid-life crisis.’
Kemp did not raise the pillow. ‘Shit, Noel Coward – that’s all I need.’ The alcohol residue was forcing out a poison sweat on his skin.
‘I bring gifts. Paracetamol.’
‘Too little, too late.’ The packet landed on his stomach. He fumbled to open it blind. ‘You realize I operate a shoot-to-kill policy on board?’
‘I’d die from cholera on this shit-bucket before you could even hit me.’
‘Don’t you knock?’
‘As a rule, no.’ The visitor wore, or rather filled, a royal blue cashmere coat and was carefully binding his Brigg umbrella. ‘But then, I rarely apply for telephone intercept warrants either.’
‘Upholding democracy as ever.’
‘A vastly overrated concept.’
The pulse in Kemp’s temples carried the ache deeper. He kept the volume low, tone on mono; basic pain management. ‘We are guided by a commitment to legality, integrity and objectivity.’ He could still do irony, and quote from the Security Service’s official statement of purpose.
