Deadfall: Agent 21 (16 page)

‘They’re not the only ones,’ Zak retorted.

‘You mean Matilda? I confess, she was beginning
to annoy me. But she had to die anyway. Malcolm is a useful asset for a man in my position, but he is rather like a puppy. If he receives a mixture of punishments and rewards, he’ll soon learn to obey his new master.’

‘The Cruz I
used
to know would never have done that.’

Cruz stopped walking. He turned to look at Zak, his eyes dead and dark. ‘The Cruz you
used
to know died – along with his father, at your hands.’

A pause. Cruz smiled and the darkness in his eyes was suddenly gone.

‘Which reminds me,’ he said. ‘I don’t only have something to
show
you. I have someone for you to meet. Please, follow me.’

Cruz led Zak across the dark camp. With every step, Zak’s eyes were searching, looking for an escape route. But he knew there was only one: the main gate, which was heavily guarded. And if he did try to run, Cruz’s East Side Boys were everywhere.

Cruz was right. There was no escape.

He led Zak to another building, just slightly smaller than the first, and politely held the door open for him. Zak entered.

There were two people in this building. One was a very young-looking East Side Boy whose facial scars looked as if they had been recently inflicted.
They glistened in the artificial light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and the skin around the cuts was all puffed up.

The second person was an older man. Black dreadlocks, flecked with grey. Zak recognized him – he had seen him through his scope from the treetop.

Zak looked at the contents of the room. Coffins.

There were perhaps thirty of them, all empty, just piled up at one end. With the exception of one. That was in the middle of the room, and contained a body: Malcolm’s cousin. The man and the boy were lifting a coffin lid, one at each end. As Zak entered, they lowered the lid onto the coffin. It landed with a dull thud.

The man handed the boy a hammer and a bag of nails. He didn’t need to give any instructions – it was clear what the boy had to do. The kid looked sickened. But also terrified. Something told Zak he wasn’t like the other East Side Boys he’d met.

The kid started to hammer nails into the coffin as the man stood over him.

‘I believe the boy’s name is Smiler,’ Cruz said quietly. ‘They call the man Boss. His real name is Sudiq. They say it’s important for a man to know the full name of his enemy, and his is a name the
world will soon know very well. Sudiq Al-Tikriti Gomez is an old friend of my family.’

But Zak didn’t care about Cruz’s friends. He cared about the coffins. ‘What’s going on here?’ he breathed.

Cruz stepped further into the room. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t worked it out for yourself, Zak. A clever boy like you. This little camp is where my people stuff drugs into soft toys, so that they can be distributed across Africa. It’s a method that served my father well for a long time. The children are cheap labour, and easy to control.’ Cruz frowned. ‘They do, unfortunately, have a habit of dying on us. If we buried them without coffins, the wild animals in the jungle would soon dig them up. So, unfortunately, I must go to the expense of boxing them up before we dispose of them. But – what is your English phrase? “Every cloud has a silver lining”? Come here, I want to show you something.’

Cruz walked to the far end of the room, where all the coffins were stacked. Zak followed, ignoring the way the man called Sudiq stared at him.

One coffin had no others stacked on top; its lid was resting on it at a slight angle. Cruz stood at the head end and Zak felt his enemy’s eyes on him as he looked down at the lid.

A small brass plaque was screwed to the coffin.
Engraved upon it were the words ‘
AGENT 21
’.

‘I didn’t want you to think,’ Cruz breathed, ‘that your death would go unmarked. Un
mourned
, perhaps, but not un
marked
.’

Nausea coursed through Zak. He felt dizzy. He was vaguely aware that Smiler was edging, terrified, to the side of the hut as Zak himself looked back to the door, on the verge of running towards it. But then he started as he realized that the man called Sudiq – Boss – was standing right behind him. He was broad-shouldered and sturdy. He stank of stale sweat, and Zak saw beads of perspiration on his pockmarked face.

Sudiq grabbed him.

Zak struggled, but strong as he was, he was no match for Sudiq. Cruz kicked the lid from the coffin, while Sudiq wrestled him down into it. In about thirty seconds, Zak found himself lying in the coffin, Sudiq’s booted foot pressing heavily against his ribcage.

And the barrel of a handgun pointing down at him.

Helpless, Zak stopped struggling. He looked up and saw beads of sweat on Sudiq’s face, and his curling sneer displaying yellow teeth.
So this is it
, he thought.
This is the moment it ends.
He closed his eyes, wondering if he would even hear the gunshot before it killed him.

‘Shall I do it now?’ Sudiq asked.

‘You hear that, Harry?’ Cruz demanded. ‘He wants to be the one who kills you. I must say, there would be a certain symmetry to that.’

Zak opened his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ he rasped, his voice hoarse and dry.

‘I’m glad you asked,’ Cruz said. ‘Like I told you, Sudiq is an old friend of the family. He worked for my father. Would you like to know what one of the last jobs Sudiq did for him was?’

Zak could barely breathe from the pressure of Sudiq’s foot on his chest. He gasped for air.

‘It was in Nigeria. Lagos. The Intercontinental Hotel, wasn’t it, Sudiq?’

Sudiq grinned.

Zak froze.

The Intercontinental Hotel was where his parents had died.

Where his parents had been murdered.

Cruz was speaking again.

‘There was a man there my father needed to eliminate. It turned out to be simpler to poison everybody around him. It was Sudiq’s idea, and him who carried it out. He’s a genius, don’t you think?’

Zak looked up, into the eyes of the man who had killed his parents. His lip curled.

He saw Sudiq’s fingers twitching around the handgun.

‘So?’ Sudiq asked. ‘Shall I kill him now?’

A moment of silence.

‘No,’ said Cruz. ‘Not yet. A simple bullet in the head would be too easy. Too painless. I want our friend to
suffer
, Sudiq. I want him to have time to regret the moment he ever set eyes on me. To
really
regret it. For the rest of his short, pitiful life.’

Cruz looked over at the boy he’d called Smiler.

‘You! Bring me the hammer and nails. Sudiq, give me your gun and replace the coffin lid.’

A nasty grin spread over Sudiq’s face. He passed the gun to Cruz and removed his foot from Zak’s chest. Zak breathed in deeply – it hurt – then tried to sit up in the coffin. Almost immediately he felt a brutal blow to the side of his already bruised face as Sudiq kicked him. He sunk down into the coffin again.

Seconds later he saw the lid descending onto him.

‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘You don’t have to do this, Cruz.
Let me out!
’

Everything was dark. The coffin lid was on top of him. He tried to push up against it, but with no success. It was a heavy weight. He imagined Sudiq sitting on top of the lid.

Zak screamed again. ‘
Let me out!
’ He banged
furiously against the lid. It was only a couple of centimetres from his face, and there was barely any room to move his limbs. He was gripped with panic. ‘
Let me out! LET ME OUT!
’

Bang.

The first nail was being hammered into the lid.

Bang.

The second.

Zak was screaming insanely now. But the banging just continued. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe . . .

And still the banging continued.

Then, after a couple of minutes, it suddenly stopped.

He heard Cruz’s voice. It sounded as though he was on his knees and speaking close to the coffin.

‘My people will take you to the burial site now, Harry. There’s no point shouting. The East Side Boys will ignore you, and there’s nobody else out here to listen to your screams. I’ll think of you, waiting for the sound of dirt to be shovelled over your tomb. I’ll think of you, buried in the ground, begging for death. It might take a while before that happens. I’m closing down this camp in a few hours. When I do, Latifah and all my little workers will have outlived their usefulness, so they’ll be joining you. The East Side Boys will dump the coffins into
one big grave and then, my friend, they and I will move on to bigger and better things. But really, I needn’t bother you with such details. You won’t be alive to see them happen.’

‘Don’t count on it, Cruz.’

‘Oh, I think that this time I
will
count on it. Goodbye, Harry. I’d say it has been a pleasure knowing you, but we both know that would be a lie.’

Silence.

‘Cruz!
Cruz!
’

There was no reply. Instead, Zak felt the coffin being lifted up.

‘
Let me out! Let me out of here!
’

The coffin was moving.

Zak wriggled furiously. Perhaps if he made enough movement, whoever was carrying the coffin would be forced to drop it. He kicked and punched the inside of the box as best he could. He jarred his body up and down.

But the coffin kept moving.

Zak was sweating, yet his body felt ice cold with fear. Minutes ago, he had been preparing himself for a swift death. An
easy
death. Now, he understood that Cruz had planned for him the worst death imaginable.

He wanted to scream, but there was no breath in his lungs . . .

All he could hear now were footsteps crunching on the ground outside. He couldn’t tell which direction he was headed in, but after a couple of minutes he heard voices speaking an African dialect he didn’t understand. There was a scraping sound, and Zak pictured the main gate of the compound opening up.

More movement. He knew he was in the forest now. It wouldn’t be long.

Five minutes passed. His body was bruised and battered, his throat tight with fear.

The movement stopped.

Silence.

Suddenly he was falling. Only for a couple of seconds, but it was enough to leave his stomach behind.

Then: impact. Zak felt as if every muscle in his body took a hit. The coffin landed with its head end tilted downwards. For a split second, Zak felt his head crack against the head end of the coffin. There was a moment of sharp, all-encompassing pain. He thought he might vomit . . .

But then, before he could even cry out for a final time, the nausea increased threefold. He felt a bright, stabbing pain behind his eyes.

Then he blacked out.

Latifah trembled.

She was not normally weak, like this. But when that strange boy had climbed into the camp, and terrifying Señor Martinez had threatened to shoot her, all her courage had dissolved. Now she huddled up on the floor, just by the door of the hut where the other worker-children were kept. The East Side Boys had thrown her back in here half an hour ago, and she hadn’t moved since.

She was
so
hungry. They hardly fed them anything here. The last time she’d had a decent meal was the night the two East Side Boys abducted her from her village. That was, what, three months ago? In that time she’d seen seven of the other children die.
Or was it eight? She could no longer keep track.

Her limbs were so thin that it hurt to move them. But she forced herself to sit up.

Which was when she saw her captors’ mistake.

The door of the hut was slightly ajar. Just a few centimetres. They’d forgotten to lock it.

Latifah knew perfectly well that none of the other children would dare to escape – they’d had all the fight beaten out of them. She wasn’t even sure if any of them were awake. They lay, exhausted, on the floor, all of them keeping a good distance from the corner of the hut that they had to use as a toilet.

She quietly pushed herself up to her feet and looked around.

No movement in the hut. She didn’t think anyone was watching her. She edged towards the door and peered out.

The door of the hut was about ten metres from the wall of the camp. Twenty metres away in the opposite direction was the back wall of another hut. She had peered into it once, and seen piles of wooden coffins. Ever since that day, she had avoided it. Now, though, having checked that none of the awful, scar-faced East Side Boys were around to see her, she ran towards that building and pressed her back against the wall while she caught her breath.

What was she doing? She didn’t really know. Just
looking for a place to hide, she supposed. The guards never counted the prisoners, so she didn’t think she’d be missed. If she could remain hidden for long enough, perhaps she’d get a chance to escape the camp.

She edged slowly round the side of this building, keeping carefully to the shadows. After a couple of minutes, she found herself by the open door. She could hear voices inside. They were speaking English, which Latifah understood.

‘Listen carefully.’ The voice belonged to the older man that the East Side Boys called Boss. ‘You two are my most trusted lieutenants, and now I have valuable work for you to do. Señor Martinez and I have prepared everything very well, so you must do exactly what we tell you, OK?’

Latifah told herself that she should keep away. But she had always been a curious girl. Maybe if she kept on listening, she’d hear something that could help her. She edged closer to the hinged side of the door. Through the crack she could see four people. Boss was there. So were two of the more brutal East Side Boys. Latifah, in her head, had named them Puncher and Kicker, because that was what they liked to do.

And Señor Martinez. The very sight of him made Latifah feel sick, and cold.

Puncher and Kicker were murmuring their agreement, their faces filled with pride.

‘Later today, someone will arrive to take away the final batch of dolls that the children have been stuffing with Señor Martinez’s product. They will leave money – two million, three hundred and forty-six thousand, six hundred and twenty-five US dollars.’