‘What about a time when people weren’t cut to pieces in their homes? Is that sentimentality or just wishful thinking?’
‘It used to be an assumption.’
‘I don’t think we can assume anything, Mr Kemp, not even civilization.’ Her delivery was remote, scrubbed clean of regret or feeling.
He blinked. Krista’s face pulsed superimposed and fleeting on Sophie’s head opposite. It too was lacerated, shapeless. ‘There are a few of us who do our best.’
‘More of you who make excuses, protect the status quo, stand around wondering what went wrong, why we allowed it to get this far.’
‘The authorities reckon they’re on top of it.’
‘They enjoy throwing words like containment and normalization around.’ Her hands had stilled. The brain was fidgeting. ‘Optimism’s a great thing. It’s pretty close to stupidity. So is going ahead with a Carnival.’
‘It’s a question of balance.’
‘And fairness?’ She was not searching for a reply. ‘I hear the police shot the main bastard, the man who destroyed my life. He died too quick.’
‘The public would agree.’
‘The public have had a gutful.’
Even her accusations were bled white of reproach, had been sieved, blanched, by the process of grieving. There were different kinds of fortitude. He thought of Mary – the black girl in Los Angeles – of the warmth that came with her resilience, the contrast with Sophie. One overcame with character, the other endured by removing it; one inspired, the other frightened.
She observed him emptily. ‘You lost a daughter. Do you have a wife?’
‘It’s kind of complicated.’ Always had been. It was his turn to ask questions, deflect. ‘From the literature and electronic notice boards we’re seeing, you’re becoming an icon of the far right.’
‘Hardly a pin-up.’
‘But I have to ask. To your knowledge, have any individuals or groups with such connections sought to contact you?’
A smile might have ghosted on the ground-beef lips, mirth sputtering in the eye. Impossible to read. ‘You’re more at a loss than I thought.’ Sure, he was at a loss. Containment and normalization.
Interview over. He returned to the rendezvous with Clive indirectly, unhurried, wanted to warm himself, to walk off low spirits. Heaviness – of feet, of heart – came with the profession, followed from every such meeting. Politically motivated crimes were the worst: the more pointless, the more committed. He would not visit Sophie again. She was out in the cold, generating her own chill.
Clive took a mouthful of sandwich, gave a cheery rearwards thumbs-up from the cab window and gunned the engine. He was a three-sixty-degree, extra-sensory, surveillance system; it was a matter of pride and instinct to clock Kemp, anyone, whatever the angle of approach.
‘’Allo, chief.’ He rewrapped his lunch and placed it carefully beside him. It freed his hands to brush breadcrumbs and pieces of chicken tikka from his shirt.
‘Excitement?’
‘Glad I don’ make a livin’ from cabbyin’. A graveyard, mon.’
‘We’re hardly a destination of choice.’
Kemp climbed in, ducked beneath a camera bracket and settled on the back seat as the vehicle moved off. The London taxi was a favourite of the MI5 Watcher fraternity – covert, spacious, a sight and sound to blend with the urban backdrop. Visibility, the commonplace, as camouflage. It put people at ease, off-guard.
They traversed the one-way streets off Holland Park Avenue, drove past the neat summer-deserted terraces of prime real estate and millionaire bonuses and slowed to negotiate a restricted turn. Traffic calming. Yet there was nothing to calm, no one on the commuter, school or rat run. Across the green line. The area crumbled from noiseless, verdant affluence to a peripheral borderland of concrete gloom and crude discouragement. Decline and irrevocable fall. Bromley Road, St Anne’s Road, the grimness of the Lancaster High Rise, the Edward Woods and Henry Dickens estates. One of London’s Bermuda pockets, too undisciplined to be a triangle. It could swallow generations whole.
‘Bogies. Front and sides.’ The Caribbean tone was steady, devoid of concern on the intercom. Clive could handle it, work a car in an ambush.
Kemp’s grip tightened on the hand-hold. ‘Your discretion.’
‘Gotcha, chief. Leave it to me.’
The adversaries were not an average inner-city crew. There were five of them – white, militarized haircuts, paramilitarized airs – overdressed for the warmth, carrying. Denys Krige’s boys, his London reps, coming out to play. It had to happen sometime. Murder was in mind, on their faces. No hesitation, no intervention. They would identify, shoot and disappear, leave an aftermath for the ambulances, for the post-emergency services. The police had abandoned the area, given up on stop and search, leaving others to stop and dispatch. A glimpse of an automatic weapon, purposefully held, rising to line up. Clive would have activated the arming switch on the dash, seen the LED indicate circuits live. Kemp waited, a passenger in the target box. Not long.
Fire at will. The explosive charge blew beneath the cab, the stun-grenades jettisoned outwards from their chassis position, ripple-detonating in a shattering combustion of dazzling maroons and thunderous flash-bangs. Flame and smoke submerged the vehicle, radiating disorientation and piercing, blinding shock. A little trick from Northern Ireland days; a valuable lesson. How to throw off terrorists, how to dump an artillery barrage on them. The cab turned on its length, battering, bucking, and accelerated away. Kemp crouched low and dazed, synapses and hearing numbed, rodeo-riding on the floor-pan as Clive exited the concussion storm. Another advantage of the London taxi: its lock. Extraction complete. No Entry. Less than a minute earlier, the threat had been no exit. The sign was ignored, the cab weaving through. At the wheel, Clive whistled the opening bars of an evangelist hymn and flicked the grenade-launch switch to neutral. In the rear, Kemp eased himself back into the seat. His luck had held, more so than for Krista. Los Angeles or London, the enemy resented its signal pyres being rained upon, doused.
CHAPTER 16
The USA
The pinnacle. Azania stood high on the roof of the tower, looking down on a world gazing up. America would gather at his feet to listen and digest, to learn the new mantras, absorb the new laws. The Reverend’s Commandments. Thou shalt not fuck with an African-American; thou shalt not take on the Tigers. There was no doubt he had their attention, no chance the cause would go unnoticed. Every camera of every international news agency was directed at his location, every microphone of every federal agency angled on him. And he was the one with intelligence and vision. Advantage Azania. He had once observed the city from a hilltop, mapping out the future. Today, he owned the city, held that future.
A line of Red Cross vehicles crawled, snake-slow, to deliver food and medicines. They would be stopped and searched, their drivers dragged out and patted down, the trucks commandeered for offloading. Naturally the enemy would probe, attempt to infiltrate, position Special Forces for shock assault. No shit. No surprise. Every eventuality was covered, every fire-angle computed, every approach simulated and rehearsed. The Tigers had spent years plundering blueprints, plotting the layout of tunnels; they had already demonstrated mastery of the battlefield. Position secure, unassailable. Azania nodded. He wore the leopard skin of a chief over his African robes, the claws of a lion around his neck. Talismans of his ancestors, touchstones of the past. He was a warlord throwing colonial arrogance back in the face of his rulers, he was a tribal general wreaking vengeance; he was a warrior standing above the bloodied plain of Isandlwana on Hlazakazi mountain, he was Ntshingwayo commanding the impi to disembowel the redcoats. The grievances were historic, the fight went on.
He removed the cap from the wooden powder horn, held the container to his nostril and snorted deep. Battle snuff, the best, flown from the grasslands of South Africa. It was an ancient blend, a cannabis and red mushroom mix that gave energy, edge, awareness solely of the imperative to win. He sniffed again. Second uptake, a shaft of titanium-intensity straight to the brain. Man, that was good, a star-burst suffusing, animating. People should ditch HRT, opt for the chemical compound THP. Pure life, promised invincibility. His eyelids squeezed tight, his focus strengthening behind. He could take on anyone, take it easy, deflect his nation’s anger, its bullets, its bombs. Such opportunity was rarely afforded a man. Adrenaline rush. He held a finger towards the water-blue sky, letting it track behind an aircraft vapour trail.
‘Government overflight,’ a senior Union League delegate observed.
‘Government oversight,’ Azania responded dreamily. He turned to the group gathered beside him. ‘I tell you, gentlemen, we will not become an island stranded in a sea of indifference.’
‘Even though it’s only LA.’ The quip died brutally in the silence.
Azania’s voice resonated. ‘We’re seizing more than ground. We’re capturing the world’s itinerary, its attention, communicating direct to its black peoples, calling them, uniting them, empowering them, freeing them.’
‘Liberating Africa,’ echoed a commander.
