‘Last wish, fucka?’ Discernible tightening of the forefinger, a changing of the pupil width.
‘For you to put the iron away. Within two hours of your squeezing that trigger you’ll be dead, along with your little helpers hiding out around Stockwell Park Estate and Angell Estate.’
‘It’s ’appenin.’ Us don’ need ya, mon.’
‘But you do. So I don’t give a fuck whether you think I’m dissin’ you or not.’ He was sitting it out, staring it out, the Afrikaner way. ‘Listen Filimon, we’ve travelled far to talk. You’re wasting my time and yours.’
‘Worth it.’ Worth every shell.
The South African was unconcerned. It would blow itself out, or blow his brains out. He had been in too long, in too many situations, to care. They were creating a climate in which hurricane was the only outcome; it was never going to be easy, never going to attract flower children and sweet-natured beatniks. He viewed the Tiger. Definitely sub-standard, undisciplined, but one made do with the tools, the foot soldiers, the natives available. They could be discarded, disposed of later. It was a lesson he had learned while serving in his country’s former National Intelligence Service, as an operative with the apartheid regime’s ultra-secret Vlaakplaas assassination commando. So many murdered to defend an ideal, to further the cause. He was proud of his contribution, had committed himself to a career in eradication, to protecting his own. Fond memories, few regrets. He had participated in Project Coast, helping to construct South Africa’s biological and chemical warfare capability, testing vector methods, conducting dummy runs and live kills – initially on baboons at the Roodeplaat compound near Pretoria, and then on human targets within and beyond South Africa’s borders. Poisoned T-shirts, toxic bullets, the liberal application of coronary-inducing phosphates: all were deployed by the state and its direct action specialists. Disappearance, disinformation, destruction. Recent history.
He could have returned to farming, retired to breed Boerboel attack dogs, grown fat and bored. But he opted to carry on, to reapply his skills. Apartheid was gone, his country finished, but not the fight, not the vision. He had been hired again, as liaison, controller, trouble-shooter, as a man to carry the torch – to put Britain and America to the torch. Some responsibility. The Boers had once spoken of a Third Force, of an underground movement that would rise to bring government low. He was its manifestation, its agent. A new dream existed. It was greater than Ted Bell and his Forresters, greater than Al Azania and his Tigers. One more uppity and armed negro made no difference.
‘We have assigned roles,’ he said.
‘Me is reassignin’ you.’
The South African shook his head. ‘Not your decision to make, boy. The Forresters aren’t here in force yet. Until then, I’m performing their duties, preparing their ground, creating ghosts for the authorities to chase.’
‘No one believes in ghosts.’
‘You believe in the existence of far right groups, in having worthy adversaries. By pumping funds to them – to those that exist or those I’ve invented – we plant seeds, multiply the harvest, support a hundred unknown serial murderers, a thousand paramilitaries.’
‘What about ya ghost, dead man?’
‘Barely ready. I dealt with the Somalian immigrants, firebombed the migrant hostels in Kent. It’s my cells, my friends in the police, the National Asylum Support Service, that make the wheels turn.’
‘Us tell ’em wheels fell off.’
‘Listen here, you Moer. Without me, there’s no deal. No deal, you return to the Reverend to explain, you go back to your zoot, to your corrugated-iron sewer in south Jamaica.’
There was no correlation between length of pause and chances of survival. The Tiger could fire to be perverse, stay the execution or toy awhile. Seconds filtered through a sand glass. Judgement made, safety-catch applied. The muzzle dropped, the weapon slipping inside the leather blouson. Employee relations sucked, the white man decided.
‘Post … poned.’ The Tiger’s eyes maintained lock, had lost neither intensity nor intent.
‘I’ll forget it happened.’
‘Ya’s not s’pposed to forget.’
Outside, the drunk had vomited on himself, appearing surprised. Shoppers and traders ignored him. They had other concerns, cash flow and siege economics to handle, the politics and pressure of a worsening crisis to confront. It was airless and oppressive in the street; even the flies were edgy, in transit, never staying long. Anyone could swat you in this life. A twenty-something in gold chains and ghetto-chic drew on a cigarette, his head bobbing to the unshared rhythm of a Walkman. His wifey was bargaining at a stall. Beside her, the pensioner shook his head and squeeze-tested a peach, his eyes swivelling, taking in the fruit. Taking in the doorway. Clive, the MI5 Watcher, was on station.
* * *
He hated old men. This one was irking him, wasting time and space, feeling the peach between thumb and forefinger. A useless piece of shit, an existence subsidized by taxpayers, sustained by an overburdened and geriatric health service. He would be doing a service by killing the man, unblocking a hospital bed, freeing resources. The eyes could come out easily; with skill and a little trepanning, the brain might pressure-cone through the skull in a virtuoso display of special effects. A novel experience for the aged bastard, a new twist for a press and media eagerly awaiting the next move. He liked to give them variety, feed their headlines, meet their deadlines, nourish the fear. It was gratifying to open up fresh possibilities, break new ground and ossified bones. A soft fruit lodged in the lungs, larynx or gaping mouth might amuse. The prey would believe it had a few months or years remaining. But expiration could be closer, was a feeble heartbeat, a peach-stone, away. He observed, analysed. To think that this purposeless, costly creature – like so many – would contribute more in death than in life, gain publicity, achieve something beyond its primitive early success in spawning a following generation of delinquents, bums and deadbeats. He saw an example across the road, headphones clamped on its ears. Nothing that a blade wouldn’t cure. No, single fatalities were pinpricks, irrelevant. A spectacular was required, a glittering statement to rival the competition, an initiative to outshine the mass shooting of African immigrants, the shredding of the all-whites dinner party, the speeches of Reverend Al Azania. He had stood, detached and disinterested, among the masses thronging the approaches to Lambeth Town Hall, listened as the black American sought cheers, blessing, legitimacy from the Brixton faithful. Quite an act, a false prophet offering false dreams, promising false dawns, a celebrity with attitude and a gift for tenderizing minds. It demanded a response, a counter-blow, a return to these streets to reconnoitre and assess. Angles of attack had to be prepared, blast points listed. There were interleaved CC cameras everywhere. Yet he could slip through, had visited pubs and clubs on Cold Harbour Lane, Brixton Road and Railton Road, probed the area around the station, visited markets, noted the location of dustbins, help centres and family finders. They overflowed, had their work cut out. The place was geared to trash, primed to ignite. It could benefit from clearance, from a special delivery of homemade explosive and high-grade nails. He would not disappoint. An idea – a bomb – was germinating. The old man had shuffled on to the next stall.
* * *
The USA
‘A drink, sir?’
‘No thanks.’
Please … yes. An hour until touchdown in Los Angeles and Kemp was ready to raid the liquor trolley, ready for a thrombosis, anything to take his mind off the trip and transport his body to a different destination. His last visit had been for Emmy’s funeral, an act of burial, a final splintering of himself from Krista, in which reproach, tranquillizers and the mad formality of grief had driven ex-wife and ex-husband into chill opposing fortresses. It was never meant to be, never intended. Things to do had prevented further contact – they had moved on, forgotten to retrace – things to do were now encouraging communication. They needed the excuse, shared common ground and a professional challenge. Besides, it was Professor Pitt who had urged him to come, Krista who happened to be in situ. It must be difficult to leave the town in which one’s daughter died – it was hard enough returning.
He flicked through the in-flight magazine, readjusted his headset: props to maintain distance between himself and the compulsive conversation of a nervous fellow traveller. The man wanted to know why he was flying. Because there’s a frigging race inferno brewing, you fuck. That would have told him, silenced the cabin. Instead, he had mumbled something about freelance journalism and gone back to skim-viewing glossy pages of watches, jewellery and scent bottles. Beautiful things for beautiful things. It was far removed from fact, from his conferences at Thames House, the field teams, the files brought up or downlinked, the photographs, the video-footage, the searching for faces and connections. Watchers were tailing the Jamaican, a moving target whose wary caution and counter-surveillance tactics indicated training, an ethos well advanced of the average Yardie gangsta. But then, he was not average, he was low-profile to the point of invisibility. Jamaican CID failed to recognize him, had scoured its records in vain. No gunman could have ever risen from the swamp perfectly formed, without leaving a trace, establishing an ever-bloodier career pattern free of police questioning, haul-ins and harassment. This one had, benefiting from complete anonymity, scrubbed crime scenes, a privileged and protected development from juvenility to adulthood. It stank of big bucks and comprehensive political patronage; it showed the strength and reach of the enemy.
That enemy was organize, dedicated; that enemy employed a roving white ambassador-courier who had conferred with the Caribbean killer in Electric Avenue, Brixton, and self-transported via eastern Europe to an unknown destination overseas. He was almost certainly South African, perhaps a representative for a renegade faction of the country’s main intelligence agency or a handler for the ruling ANC’s security apparat. Insurgency and intrigue were their bread and butter. Again, identity and motive were a mystery. The Colonel had communicated from his German stronghold with news of sightings by underworld friends of a man matching the profile in the old spa town of Piešt’any, Slovakia. The place was a favoured haunt of arms’dealers and Arab moneymen, a venue for plotting coups and haggling over contraband – even for arranging the shipment of race-hate propaganda. Kemp had once participated in a sting against Irish Republican terrorists there. Times changed, warfare evolved. MI5 was busy deploying a squad to check on the South African’s spoor, sending other officers to the northern British town of Skelmersdale in which a criminal quartermaster had been found executed with a wound caused by a stiletto blade through his eye. The deceased was suspected of having provided a weapon used in the murder of undercover police officers and to create carnage at a south-west London supper party.
How? Why? When? Pages leafed through his fingers, airbrushed and anorexic waifs gummy-bear-smiling in unrealistic beachware from unaffordable locations. The questions were circular, the answers – the Jamaican, the South African – running rings. MI5 had lost one abroad, could not move on the second and send Special Branch units crashing through doors or squealing onto sidewalks until it had built a case and could ensure a comprehensive win. Painstaking work, slow, laborious, while the world turned faster, Clive and his surveillance crew ambled behind, and the adversaries sped away. Krista and the Bureau might aid his efforts, Professor Duncan Pitt allow him to leapfrog, but the opponent had the advantage, the initiative. There were international dimensions, global scope, white-black extremes and black-white cooperation, in play. It added up to scant evidence, to the single insight that fatalities and fury would grow.
Arrival. He was there in semi-official capacity, would stay in monochrome and low-observability mode, functioning from a mid-range business hotel. The professor’s invitation had not been extended to the FBI; the information was for his ears, his eyes. It was need-to-know, need for security. He had to respect it. An argument erupted between two travellers to his right, developed quickly, baggage strewn around, racial abuse and punches thrown within ten seconds, armed guards descending within fifteen. Unpleasant overtones, recurring themes. Situation contained – for now. People were jumpy, migrating; people were prepared, primed, to draw and fire. He noticed the atmosphere change, pressure rise, the expectancy in the eyes of the uniformed officers. Angelinos were anticipating catastrophe. It was in the air, in the mood. LAX is a non-smoking airport. How reassuring. Mass psychosis was a trickier addiction to address.
‘Hello Josh.’ He knew she was beside him before she spoke or touched his arm, a presence alerting the senses, alarming the soul. Friend or foe. She entered his vision field. ‘Welcome to LA, city of victims, cranks and addicts.’
‘Which makes us what?’
‘Martians. You’re looking well.’
He was going to stutter, but managed to fake composure. ‘You too.’
‘You’re not mad at me for showing?’
Only mad at himself for manufacturing sweat at the nape of his neck. It was brave of her to come, generous. That was Krista. Same voice, same deep eyes, same engagement. He could see why they had fallen in love, had shared a life, a past and a daughter. She was back, familiar and far away, filtered by hindsight and history. The result was contradiction and confusion, defining her as an object of curiosity. And he was curious, he could not deny it. In over a decade of marriage, she had given part of herself to him, taken part of him for herself. It was dependency; the greater the attraction, the harder the ultimate rejection. The quality of pain changed eventually – you learned to breathe with it, function through it – and human adults did the same. He hoped so. Low-level hurt remained, came in with a fresh barb.
‘No, I’m not mad at you for showing.’ He squeezed her shoulder, familiarity struggling with the awkward etiquette and shyness of divorce. ‘Thanks.’
‘Not at all. We’re work partners.’
