Danger Woman (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

The moment Lenka's men left to join their boss at the casino, an SUV pulled up in front of the warehouse. The two men tasked to guard the building had clearly not anticipated any trouble so soon. They had their weapons slung barrel down over their shoulders. One, Alyosha, was facing away from the road to avoid the early sun which, because of his massive hangover, produced more pain than he was willing to endure. The second, Mitka, held a cigarette in one hand and sipped from a cup of coffee in the other. Caught in the moment, he hesitated before dropping either one or both of them when three men piled out of the car, covered the three meters that separated them, and put both men in a choke hold. They were disarmed, zip-tied, duct-taped, and dumped in the cargo area of the SUV. While two men disassembled their weapons and scattered the parts on the ground, a third spray-painted some words in Russian on the walls of the building. When he'd finished, he dropped a copy of
The Watchtower
on the doorstep, jumped into the car with the others, and sped away. The whole operation took no more than three and a half minutes.

***

Irena Davidova also awoke with a splitting headache and the sense that something bad was going to happen today. Dark premonitions were not a stranger to her. They had saved her life on one occasion and money on several others. Lenka was not in bed and didn't answer her call. So, most likely that would be the bad thing she feared. She closed her eyes and tried to think over the pounding in her head. Of course, he had gone gunning after Greshenko. The dunce just refused to accept the fact that Botswana was not Russia and the Kasane was not St. Petersburg and you just didn't run around killing people in the open. She showered and dressed, finished off the few aspirins left in the bottle and searched for a bottle with something containing alcohol. She found a half-full glass she'd left the night before. She drank it in one long pull, straightened her skirt, and stalked out the door.

Lenka had the auto, of course. That meant she needed a ride to the warehouse. She assumed he would be headed for the casino and hoped he would stop to pick up Cszepanski and men before he did. If she hurried, she might catch them before they left for the casino and botched what was left of the operation. If not, she'd be there to pick up the pieces, if there were any to pick up. The man at the front desk said he was sorry, but there were no taxis at the moment. Perhaps he could arrange a rental. It would take and hour or so but, he felt certain he could manage to find a car. She told him that she didn't have an hour. Outside, a man leaning on the driver's side door of the lodge's van listened to her story. He accepted a small bribe and agreed to drive her to the warehouse. He said he could not wait for her and she would have to find another way back. She said she understood and climbed in.

***

When Lenka and his crew returned to the warehouse, there were no guards inside or out. The walls of the building had been spray-painted in Russian,
Домой
had been applied in large red letters across the doorway and
Вашего народа, в прошлом
next to it and overlapped two panes of the adjacent window. They stepped out of the vehicles, guns drawn, eyes searching the surrounding shrubbery. There did not appear to be anyone around, including the two men left to keep watch.

“What has happened here?” Lenka's face began to redden. “Where are the men?”

“Gone.” Cszepanski kicked open the warehouse door. He bent and picked up the magazine lying there and handed it to Lenka.

“What is this?”

“Is a copy of that missionary magazine the numbers man showed us back at the casino.”

He tore it to shreds. “I think we go back there and shoot that man. I should have done it when I had the chance. He must be in on this.”

“And I will guarantee that he is no longer there.”

Cszepanski disappeared into the building. Lenka paced the parking lot, cocking and releasing the hammer on his gun, and muttering to himself. The other men gave him a wide berth. The two Boers shuffled out, glancing over their shoulders at a scowling Cszepanski. He herded them over to Lenka.

“These idiots were asleep, they say. They didn't hear or see anything.”

“Something has happened?” asked the one they called Hans, confusion and fear in his eyes.

“Look for yourself, simpleton. You see what someone has done to the wall while you two idiots were sleeping?”

The two men pivoted and gazed at the spray-painted words. “Ja, sure we do. What's it say?”

It's Russian, you idiot.
Домой
, it means, ‘Go home.' Someone dropped by and tells me I should go home. What do you think of that? Should I be going home? No? Okay.
Вашего народа, в прошлом
, is meaning ‘Your people are gone.' There were two men posted here when we left. We call them the Karamazovs, you know why? It is because of their names, like the brothers. You know this book? No? You are idiots. So, two men with weapons. These men are very tough. The weapons are loaded. These men have killed for me. You understand? And now they are gone. Why are they gone? Who took them away? Of course you don't know. You are sleeping. Look on the ground. What do you see?”

The Boers scanned the ground around them. “Their weapons are in pieces scattered all over the place. Somebody field-stripped their automatic rifles.”

“Ah, now you are getting smarter. So, some people drive up here, disarm two of my best men, take their weapons apart, spray-paint messages on the wall, and you hear nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Cszepanski, take these two around back and shoot them.”

Whether the order would have been carried out they would never know. At that moment a van with markings that identified it as belonging to the Mowana Lodge pulled up and delivered Irena Davidova to them. The look in her eye and the set of her jaw meant that there would be words, shouting, and recriminations. When things went badly, there were always words, shouting, and recriminations. In the end, Irena would turn Lenka around and some sense of order would be returned to what they were attempting. But first, Lenka's earlier trip to the casino had to be unpacked and common sense restored.

The Boers, seeing their chance, slipped away. They would not return. By this time they had discerned that the man who paid them to bring trouble to the locals had slipped around the bend and their best chance to survive the next year or two meant heading back to Pretoria. As Cszepanski had noted, they were not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they weren't Lenka's idiots either. Once it had been pointed out to them, they could read the handwriting on the wall. They found a quiet bottle store, bought drinks, and plotted their exit from Kasane. All they needed was money and transportation. Somehow they would manage that, they felt sure.

***

Modise stepped through the doorway after the office door closed behind Lenka and his people. He watched as they conferred and then drove away.

“You were amazing, Joseph. Such acting. I imagine you play a great Father Christmas. I will mention this in my report. That copy of the Jehovah's Witness paper was a masterful touch.”

Joseph rubbed his forehead. “It was what you said for me to…Modise, he put that gun of his right here. He was very angry and I think a little crazy. I could have been killed.”

“We had you covered the whole time.”

“No, no you couldn't have. I mean it was right here between my eyes.” Joseph put his forefinger on the still red spot between his eyebrows where Lenka had pressed his pistol. He exhaled and shook his head. “If he had pulled the trigger, I'm a dead man. You are in the other room ready to arrest him if he did it, yes, but there was no way you could have prevented it, Modise. I was the goat staked to the ground and bait for the jackal.”

“Joseph…”

“Where's the loo? I think I'm going to be sick.”

Modise pointed toward the hallway and Ikanya dashed through the door. Modise heard a second door bang open and then his colleague throwing up.

“You'll be fine, Joseph,” he shouted. “It will be something to tell that baby of yours when he or she is older.”

Joseph's only reply was a prolonged groan followed by more gagging. Modise couldn't blame him. He was right. Not even if they'd moved the instant Lenka leveled his gun at Joseph's head, could they have saved him if the Russian had pulled the trigger. Modise felt a little queasy himself and a little guilty as well.

Chapter Thirty-three

Dimitri Krasney and Alyosha Pitkin, the “Karamazovs,” were surprised to learn three important things. First, the police and the army seemed to work together. Two, neither had a problem with civilians performing arrests even when the arrest included duct tape and spray-painting a building, and three, that carrying automatic weapons like the ones they had in their possession that morning fell into the category of a serious breach of the law. All of which explained why Cszepanski had told them earlier to be armed but also to stay indoors. As it happened, the tin roof on the warehouse turned it into an oven so they'd stepped outside to keep guard. Their crime was so serious, they were told, that they had to be temporarily incarcerated, not in the local jail, but in the barracks of the local unit of the Botswana Defense Force. They were dangerous men and the police feared they would influence the very few local miscreants currently in the general prison population. Not only that, but since none of them spoke Setswana, there was no one who could translate for them. Thus, the isolation. Their protests that everyone was speaking English and they did not need translators also ended up being ignored. They were Russian, yes? So, no translators available.

It came as a further shock to them when they discovered that two men who'd been arrested for poaching the day before were not only men they knew very well, but had shared the same fate. At least they now knew where and how their colleagues had disappeared. It began to dawn on one of the more perceptive of them that they were being used as pieces in a complicated game which had as its goal the destruction of Lenka. They demanded their phone call, their lawyer. Okay, not their lawyer, their barrister. Their captors merely shrugged and suggested they watched too much American television and that this was Botswana, not Boston. And things were done differently here. Their access to legal council had hit a small snag but, not to worry, in a few days they would be allowed to talk with a barrister. In the meantime, their visas had been revoked. In the unlikely event they were found not guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, they most certainly would be deported and they probably should worry about that more than when they would see legal counsel. There were outstanding warrants in two countries for three of the four.

The further protests from all four that they had been kidnapped and their arrests had been made by people who were Russian gangsters and not the police fell on deaf ears. The suggestion was absurd on its face, the captain told them. There were no gangsters in Botswana, Russian or otherwise, and if there were, how could the detainees possibly know about them?

They needed to understand that the Government of Botswana held very serious positions on poaching and the carrying weapons, any weapons. Very serious.

***

The prisoners were nominally Superintendent Mwambe's to deal with. They had been rounded up in his area of responsibility. He did not know whether to be pleased or furious that Modise had recruited the BDF to handle them. Should he assume the responsibility and perhaps the credit for removing four dangerous felons from the general population, or should he report this travesty of justice to the director of the DIS and have Modise brought down a peg or two? For the moment, he decided to stay quiet and see how it all played out. If the operation that Modise had launched in his jurisdiction—without his knowledge, should be noted—failed, he would formally complain. If, on the other hand, it succeeded, he would take the plaudits.

What he couldn't understand was the change in his newest friend, Joseph Ikanya. When Ikanya had arrived from Gaborone to inspect and consult, they'd both agreed that the department needed a thorough review and a return to traditional policing. People like this Modise, for example, with his lack of regard for the experience of men older and wiser than he, needed to be disciplined. He, and men like him were much too young for command. At least that is how Mwambe remembered their conversations. Then, Inspector Ikanya volunteered to help Modise and now he had become a completely different person.

Ikanya had bounced into his office earlier gushing like a schoolboy. “Mwambe,” he'd said, “I had forgotten what real police work was like.”

Mwambe had puffed up a little at that and started to relate some of his more exciting stories about crime in Kasane, but was cut off. Ikanya blurted his adventures at the casino and how close he'd come to death. Mwambe had been appropriately shocked.

“You should report this malfeasance of office immediately. This Inspector Modise is acting without authority and endangering lives. Yes, Joseph, you should call the director.”

“No, no, you miss my point. Yes, I was frightened and yes, I could have been killed, but don't you see, this is what we are called to do? This is police work, not sitting at a desk pushing paper about and making telephone calls to people who already know what you are about to tell them. It is about apprehending criminals and taking risks, not organizing motorcades and traffic details. If you are not willing to put your life on the line to insure that the law is kept, you do not belong in policing.”

Mwambe didn't understand and changed the subject. Putting one's life on the line seemed excessive, particularly in light of the approach of his retirement. In fact, Mwambe had passed the correct age and had accrued the tenure necessary for retirement. He'd put it off mostly because he had settled into his position like one sinks in a soft sofa, an exceedingly comfortable sofa and at the same time, one difficult to get out of. So, he'd put off the business of filling out forms and all the fuss that went with that. He'd told Derek that if they wanted him to retire, they would say so. And besides, if he retired, what would become of his nephew? Mwambe had these thoughts swirling through his head as he, Ikanya, and Modise viewed the four prisoners through the one-way glass

Modise's voice cut through his musing. “Superintendent, are you able to accept this situation for a few days? I know it is irregular, but this whole situation is irregular. We have never had to confront criminals of this caliber before. They are organized and heavily armed. The BDF colonel tells me that these men had weapons more modern than those the government issued to his men. That can't be good. We broke their weapons down and left them on the ground as a message. Naturally, we removed and kept the firing pins. We couldn't leave that kind of dangerous material in working order. So, taking this Lenka down has to be job number one and done in such a way that no other group will attempt to repeat what he is up any time soon.”

As he listened to Modise rattle on, Mwambe realized he was stuck between two equally unattractive choices. If he objected, Modise would overrule him and he'd look the fool if the operation succeeded. If it failed, he would be a hero, but he would be labeled as “not a team player.” He thought that he might check into that retirement paperwork after all.

“We shall proceed as you suggest, Modise, but I have my reservations.” There, he'd covered himself. He could play ball but his experience led him to suggest caution.

“Splendid. I will report to the director I have your full support.” Modise excused himself and left the room before he could object. Ikanya beamed.

“This is exciting, don't you think? Oh, if you would like to be the person who fools the gangsters next time, I'll put in a word.”

“Umm, ah, no thank you, Joseph, I am too close to retirement. Did you know? Yes, I believe that it may be my time to step down and let someone else take on the reins.”

“Well, good for you, Mwambe. I hope you have a comfortable retirement. Shall I send for the forms, or perhaps you'd rather do that?”

***

“Modise, a moment.” BDF Colonel Kande Ditau stopped Kgabo in the hall as he exited the room. “You realize we can only continue this charade for another day at the most?”

“I do. May I ask one more favor? When you turn these men over to Superintendent Mwambe, could you impress on him the need to keep them separate from the other prisoners and to find some pretext to hold off on the meeting with their barrister? I cannot know if this will crack open in time or not. We are doing things here that we have never done before.”

“That seems pretty obvious to me. All day I have been receiving calls from Gaborone. They want to know about the poachers. I have to tell them we are building a case. They say, ‘Well, are they poachers or not?' I am like a dancer here, Modise, tapping away. I cannot hold out much longer. So, tomorrow, Mwambe receives these men. I will impress on him the need to keep them incommunicado, but I cannot guarantee anything, you see. We are, after all, dealing with Mwambe.” His mobile rang. He opened it and listened, nodded and snapped it shut. “Sorry, I must leave. There has been a road accident along A33 Road in Pandamatenga. A vehicle driven by a South African veered off the road and knocked down some of my men. One of them is dead and another in hospital. If that is not enough, now I hear there is another accident, a motorist died on the spot after an elephant attack. This is rapidly becoming a very bad day for me.”

Modise thanked him. They both dashed out the door. The superintendent headed to Kasane Primary Hospital, Modise to his car. He'd told Sanderson he'd meet her at two and he was going to be late.