They were gathering, beads of vehicles chasing with infra-red headlamps, travelling up from Long Beach, moving in from Torrance. Light strike vehicles, their space-frames skeletal and hung with grenade launchers, chased ahead, reconnoitring, their tyres fat and jumping the sidewalks. Behind came the trucks, the personnel carriers, pennants flying, the fighting men crouched low and clutching assault rifles and the paraphernalia of close-quarter battle. A comprehensive arsenal. It could incinerate opposition, smash aside the barricades, punch up Central Avenue and Alameda Street for Downtown. Preparations were made, all was ready. Even the rogue cops were on duty to wave the force through, smooth its path, to wish it well. Within hours, America would change. In place of Special Forces, instead of federal government challenging and defeating Azania, it would be a white supremacist movement led by Forrester shock troops that roared in to seize the day, take back the initiative, champion the cause. Legitimacy would pass to a new order, to the saviours of the race. As combat was joined, so too would Americans rally across the land, pledging allegiance to the strength and unity of the modern Caucasian Nibelung. The Africans could be defeated, relegated to the plantation, the slave-ship, the penitentiary, the scaffold – to history. Things would come to pass.
Light aircraft flew in low, the sound of their props scratchy and petulant in the orange-tinged darkness. They were below the radar, beyond the imagination or scope of most law-enforcement agencies. Flaps deployed, touch-downs made, engines cutting as figures deployed to offload stores and secure the airstrip. This was the forward headquarters for Ted Bell’s senior commanders, the start point for the Forresters’ assault on legend. They could be proud. Coded messages passed. The first convoys streamed through the gates, wheeling to the flanks, parade-ground correct, stop-watch precise. On schedule, on the mark. More came, the numbers swelling, ordered, anticipating. There was no room for failure, no option of retreat. Sacrifice was honour, part of the covenant.
A flare went up, a thin vapour plume followed by a soft pop and floating colour brilliance. It was beautiful, hypnotically still. And it was the wrong signal. The helicopters were invisible and unheard, yet their missiles were already airborne. Five trucks went up, an aircraft ignited and enveloped others on the pan. Covert had gone overt, the white heat of chaos and burning laid out, laid bare, in a scene of backing, sliding machines, scattering people and secondary explosion. Parachute flares mushroomed, picking out targets, the desperate falling-back and haphazard flicker of small-unit actions and large-scale encirclement. Command was gone, control nowhere, communication ceased. Tanks had appeared at the entrance, armoured infantry vehicles accelerating to block escape and limit manoeuvre. Rounds ricocheted like glow-worms off their hulls – ineffectual, hopeless. They returned fire, on the move, gas turbines whining, cannon shells and Gatling lead sweeping across the open ground, raking, devastating. A dune-buggy made a dash for the wire, disassembling and going molten in a flash of phosphorus. Another careered in flames head-on into an advancing caterpillar column and crumpled ignominiously beneath its tracks. A tyre warehouse, struck by an errant anti-tank rocket, crystallized into a blast bomb, bowling out hoop incendiaries to roll and bounce among the fray. Everywhere was smoke, the strobe effect of battle, the tangle of steel and peppering shot of shrapnel; everyone moving, crawling forward or scrambling to regroup. The group no longer existed.
Conquest was rapid, surrender inevitable and unconditional. They arrived below the undulating streaks of tracer and the crunching impact of open-sighted artillery barrage, the clatter of hovering rotors, the ripple-bursts of machine guns. Deafening, conclusive. Resistance pockets were blanketed and silenced, the strays mopped and rounded up. Mission effected. The killing fields of Los Angeles. It had been a surgical affair, a bloody incident. And the cycle was interrupted, the revolution stalled. Nothing was inevitable, no vow immutable. An important truth. The Forresters were shown to be exposed, weak; the Tigers could prove flawed, mere paper constructs. Each needed the other. Neither was a guarantor. Check.
* * *
Germany
The grey eyes of the Colonel registered amusement. Herr Oberregierungsrat having a private joke. He enjoyed his games, his gambles, had displayed the same advanced humour when escaping to his East German paymasters. Never mind the betrayals, those hurt or left behind. As long as he was happy, comfortable; so long as he was making money. Kemp surveyed the scene. Little had altered since his previous trip. Fresh flowers cascaded from vases, the atrium roof glinted, the sordid stagnation of Dessau remained locked out beyond the clean walls and modern art. In here, business was good; out there, in the industrial wastelands, the silent steel mills, business had ceased. The market was bleak; the market was black. For the Colonel, it meant opportunity, cash, the odd Rodin, the occasional Monet.
‘Drink?’ the Colonel asked.
‘I’d prefer an explanation.’
A single telephone call had prompted the visit. The German had promised an intelligence coup, had spoken cryptically of an angle appearing to the South African question. That angle now sat, nursing a Pilsner, in a deep leather armchair on the far side of the room. It was Denys Krige’s representative himself – the button man, the firelighter, the South African agent who had cameo-acted across MI5’s surveillance screens, who had murdered, liaised, given orders, who had carried race warfare to the heart of Britain. Different hair colour, change of contact lenses; similar expression. The man lifted the bottle in recognition.
‘Congratulations for capturing my operatives, Kemp. It’s a pity. They were good oaks.’ Boer accent, Boer vocabulary.
‘Depends on your perspective.’
‘You would have made quite a trophy.’
‘Hunting season’s closed. You want to tell that to your boss, Krige?’
The South African pulled on the bottle. ‘Read the newspapers, Kemp, look across Europe. Riots, turmoil, everywhere. French CRS have been using live bullets on black looters in Yvelines and Mantes-la-Jolie. Demonstrators coming out for or against Azania. Closed? The season’s only just beginning to open.’
‘You wouldn’t be here if things were going right.’ Kemp turned to the Colonel. ‘Your idea?’
The white eyebrows disengaged, rising with innocence. ‘His call, Josh. I simply provide the neutral rendezvous.’
‘For money.’
‘I have overheads.’
‘I thought you had anti-fascist, anti-racist principles.’ Kemp switched back to the South African. ‘I’ll give the Colonel the benefit of the doubt. He might smuggle, but not the merchandise you arranged.’
‘The CDs and DVDs your Royal Navy intercepted were simple market-primers.’
‘What about the cellphones with integrated explosives, the haulier sitting in Leopold Prison in Trnava?’
‘The Slovaks got lucky. We could have reshaped the head of every West Indian mugger in Britain with those. I worked on the concept myself.’
‘You must be proud. What about Sophie, the woman you used as a proxy bomber? Part of your strategy?’
Uninterested, the South African examined the beer label. ‘Situation demanded it. We took a view and acted. It was one way to stay ahead of your Security Service.’ His eyes lifted. ‘Ever tried Windhoek lager? I can recommend it.’
‘Your recommendations stink.’
‘That’s no way to treat a man who’s journeyed to Europe to see you.’
‘Forgive my rudeness. Each time you’re over, people die. Asylum seekers, the criminal armourer, Sophie, Azania’s Tiger.’
‘Natural wastage.’
Kemp remembered the bandaged head on the hospital pillow, Sophie’s torn face at the house in Holland Park, the remnants of her car lodged in a crater of its own making. Products of hate, delegation, of diktats handed down by Denys Krige, couriered by this man. Natural wastage. Raw devastation.
He watched the Colonel tap a filterless cigarette and insert it into a gilt-wood holder. The German was relaxed, would have had his guest frisked. It paid to take precautions, paid extra to straddle contraband routes and both sides of the law, to sit on and operate fences, to offer beer, hospitality, to all takers.
‘The West African diplomat found dead among the others at the Notting Hill Carnival.’ Kemp posed it as a statement.
‘Wasn’t much left, I hear. What of him?’
‘He was a few feet from the blast.’
‘Coincidence.’
‘Rarely exists in our profession.’
‘Ja, but bystanders do.’ A mouthful of beer was savoured and swallowed. ‘He was there to soak up the atmosphere. Ended soaking up metal instead. A bonus. It happens. He wasn’t factored in.’
Forensics were piecing together the scene but had failed to piece together the remains of the African official blended and dispersed by the force of detonation. The embassy circuit was in uproar, explanations demanded, delegations sent, the victim’s family and national leaders insisting on a government inquiry and ample compensation. Blame was hurled, conspiracy mentioned. The man had status, held high position. He was linked by blood to the ruling regime, enjoyed the privilege, wealth and contacts commensurate with membership of an elite, access to a central bank. It was rumoured that he had undergone treatment from a Harley Street psychiatrist. But rumours were part of the fabric, complication an element in every dealing with Africa. Rape cases and parking offences were expected, money laundering was as customary as cocktail receptions. Envoys came, envoys went. Rarely did they mutate to vapour and a pair of smoking shoes. A further twist, fission of body, fusion of domestic and international politics, of Africa and the West. It was what Denys Krige had designed, what he had anticipated.
Kemp studied the intricate wood and ivory inlay of a cabinet, positioning himself, countering the South African’s indifference. ‘You realize we’ve got a fix on you from our records?’
‘Should have acted faster.’
