In the Evil Day (42 page)
Niemand shot him at point-blank range, in the chest, a three-round burst, gave him the double tap, the man went backwards and sideways, not dramatically, met the barn and slid.
Two bangs in the house, an instant apart.
The shotgun tripwire.
Someone in the house, the doorkeeper had left his position, come through the front door, into the sitting room.
Four down, that would be it.
Make sure. If I come from the back, he’ll think I’m one of them.
Niemand ran for the back door, wrenched it open, ran through the room, through the sitting room door in a crouch, the dim lamplight, a figure on the floor… Little pops of flame, he didn’t hear the sound, he was punched in the chest, more than once, it was hard to tell, so quick, he stopped in his tracks.
Niemand emptied the magazine into the man on the floor, firing bursts as he went to his knees.
Silence.
No pain.
Not gut-shot anyway, the BB. Good thing I found that in the car. And the knife.
That’s something positive.
He fell over sideways, felt his head hit the stone floor. As if it belonged to someone else.
Breathing was a problem. Something stuck in his throat.
Funny place to die. Up here in English mountains. Hated the English, the old
man. Dumb to take on four of them. Still. Know they’ve been in a fight. Jess. So
lovely. So good.
THE FARM gate was open and they drove up the steep drive and turned left, stopped in front of the low stone farmhouse. In the lights, they could see the front door—open, not fully open, ajar.
‘Well,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s the place. Here’s hoping.’
‘Yes. There’s a light on.’ They sat for a moment.
‘Cold to have the front door open,’ said Anselm.
‘Yes.’ She shivered. Her clothes made a sound, her chin against the fabric of her coat.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Since we’re here.’
He got out. Black night, cold wind whining in trees somewhere nearby. They were high here, clean air, it felt like the Balkans.
He went to the front door, reached across the threshold, held the doorknob and knocked.
Nothing. Not a sound.
‘Mr Niemand,’ he said loudly.
Nothing.
‘Jessica.’ Louder.
Nothing. Just the wind, the keening wind.
He felt the hair on his neck. He looked around. He could see Caroline in the car, her outline. His chest hurt.
She saw him looking at her and got out, came across the gravel, a tall woman, not unhandsome.
He tried again.
‘Mr Niemand. Constantine.’
Nothing.
He pushed open the door and went in. A small hallway, coats and hats. The light was coming from a door to the left.
A smell of something. No quite of burning, something more acrid. He looked around. Caroline was biting her lower lip.
‘I don’t know about this,’ she said quietly.
Anselm thought he would like to turn and leave, drive down the hill, along the winding road, through the cluster of buildings, get back to the highway.
Too late for that. It occurred to him that he had no panic symptoms. He was uneasy, he was close to fearful, but he was not showing the symptoms.
Caused by fear and violence, cured by the same.
Hair of the dog.
He went through the door, saw the legs first.
A figure in black, absolutely dull black, no head. No, a hood on his head, face down, his black hands around a black weapon, a machine-pistol. In the middle of the room, a shotgun tied to a chair was pointing at him. Anselm was too shocked to move.
Caroline made a noise, a deep, sobbing intake of breath.
On the other side of the room lay another figure in dark clothing, a man lying on his side, blood run from him over the stone floor to the edge of the carpet, soaked up by the carpet, blotted, blackish blood.
The man made a sound like a hiccup. Again.
Anselm did not think, he went to the man, pulled his poloneck down, put an index finger against his throat, in the collarbone cavity. The faintest pulse.
‘He’s alive,’ he said. ‘We’d better do something.’
For want of anything better to do, he took off the man’s rolled up balaclava.
‘It’s him,’ said Caroline in a voice without timbre. ‘It’s Mackie. Niemand.’
‘And a terrible fucking nuisance the man is too,’ said O’Malley from the doorway.
HE CAME into the dim room, bent over and picked up the machine-pistol lying near Niemand’s head.
Anselm stood up. ‘Jesus, Michael,’ he said. ‘What the fuck is this? What exactly the fuck is this?’
O’Malley had the magazine out, looking into it. He dropped it on the floor and took another one out of his coat pocket. It made a precise snick as it locked in.
‘What the fuck is this, John?’ echoed O’Malley, looking around the room like a real estate agent being asked to sell something nasty. ‘Why do rich people crave this sort of thing? A croft in the Welsh wilderness, wind never stops howling, natives slathered in sheepshit and woad, incomprehensible tongue, nasty secessionist tendencies.’
O’Malley walked over to the shotgun tied to the chair, ran a hand over the trigger guard, pulled at something. It caught the lamplight and Anselm saw that it was nylon fishing line that ran to the leg of an armchair.
‘A booby trap so cheap, so primitive, so old. And here lies dead of it a killer with the most expensive and sophisticated training the modern world can provide.’
He tested the triggers with a black-gloved finger. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Knew how to make this work, did your Mr Niemand. Breathe hard on the buggers and Bang.’
‘Michael, what?’ said Anselm. ‘Tell me. It’s late, I’m tired and sober and I’ve got a knife wound nine inches long. What?’
O’Malley had the Heckler & Koch in his left hand. He transferred it to his right.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Sorry about this too.’ He ran a hand over his curly head. ‘Truly, I wish it were another way.’
It came to Anselm, as it had come to him in Beirut, that something had ended, something was over and gone. A still moment, the highest point of the pendulum’s swing, the end of momentum, the dead point.
‘Kaskis,’ he said.
O’Malley was looking at Caroline. She was frozen, hands at her sides, holding herself like a Guardsman on parade, waiting for the Queen.
‘I saved you, John,’ said O’Malley. ‘You and Riccardi. They wanted to kill all three of you, I talked them out of it. I said it wasn’t necessary, you knew nothing, the idiot Riccardi less. I’ve given you eight good years. Well, eight years. Think of it that way. And I told you you weren’t a journalist anymore. I tried to warn you off.’
Anselm thought that he had never seen this look on O’Malley’s face. His handsome poet’s face was sad. He was going to kill both of them and he was sad that he had to do it.
O’Malley raised the weapon, held it on its side, weighed it in his hand, bounced it.
‘This is awkward,’ he said. ‘I would really rather not. But.
Necessitas
non habet legum
. Know the expression, boyo?’
Anselm nodded. He felt nothing. No panic this time.
‘Yes, well…’ O’Malley raised the weapon and pointed it at Caroline.
‘Sorry, darling’ he said. ‘But think what you did to that poor old bugger Brechan on behalf of MI5.’
Grunts, not loud, several quick grunts.
O’Malley’s face below the high cheekbone blew apart, his face seemed to break in two, divide, an aerosol spray of red in the air around his head, a piece of scarlet veil floating.
They stood.
The woman came in, went to Niemand, put her head down to his head, seemed to kiss him.
She jerked her head up.
‘He’s alive,’ she said. ‘For fuck’s sake do something.’
Anselm looked at Caroline. She was grey-white, the colour of cemetery gravel. She shook her head and put her hand in a coat pocket and took out a cellphone.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right.’
And then Caroline, holding the tiny device towards the light to see the keys, she moved her head, her long hair moved, she looked up and said to Jess in her upper-class voice:
‘I don’t suppose, I don’t suppose you know where the film is?’
IN THE BLUE underwater gloom of the work room, Anselm and Baader and Inskip and Carla watched the big monitor.
The television anchor was too old to pull her hair back like a twelve-year-old Russian gymnast. She tested her lips swiftly. They worked. Collagen and cocaine did terrible things to lips.
All front teeth showing, she went through the preamble. Then she said:
We warn that the film contains images of violence that will shock. Please
ensure that children are not watching.
The aerial view of wooded sub-tropical country, late in the day.
Angola, 1983. The oil-rich African country is in the grip of a long-running
civil war in which the United States has intervened, spending millions of dollars in
an attempt to counter Russian influence. This film was taken from a helicopter.
Analysts say from the co-pilot’s seat. They believe the film was unauthorised and
the person filming took care not to be seen.
A village burning, thatched huts burning, several dozen huts, cultivated fields around them marked by sticks.
This nameless village is in northern Angola. There is no evidence of military
activity.
On the ground now, another helicopter in view, no markings visible.
The filming is through the open door of the helicopter. Notice the dark edge to
the right. The other helicopter is a Puma of a type used by the South African
Defence Force.
Now a long panning shot, bodies everywhere, dozens and dozens of bodies. An enlarged still of a group of bodies.
These people have been overcome by something. There are signs of vomiting,
stomach cramps and diarrhoea.
Another enlarged still. At least a dozen people lying near a crude water trough. Black people in ragged clothes, mostly women and children, a baby. Some have their hands held to their faces, some are face down on the packed dirt.
Medical experts say the signs of poisoning are even more apparent here. They
are consistent with those produced by the biological poison ricin, which is made
from a toxic protein found in castor oil seed.
Motion again, white men in combat gear carrying automatic weapons, standing around, six of them, relaxed, weapons cradled.
The frame held still, enlarged.
These men are American soldiers, part of a super-secret unit called Special
Deployment, also known as Sudden Death. They were drawn from Special Forces
Operational Detachment Delta Airborne stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Although they wear no insignia, they are armed with the Heckler & Koch MP5K,
first issued in 1977. The man on the left carries a Mossberg Cruiser 500 shotgun,
and Beretta 9mm handguns are visible on three of them. Their boots are Special
Forces tropical issue.
We also know the names of four of these soldiers.
Circles around four heads.
Enlargements.
From the left, Maurice Tennant Gressor, Zoltan James Kaldor, Wayne Arthur
Fitzgerald, and Joseph Elias Diab. These men are all dead, in circumstances that
can only be called suspicious. It is thought that all except two of the Special
Deployment members in this shot are dead.
The film moving again, two men in coveralls talking to a tall soldier, the only one without headgear, his back to the camera. The camera zooms in on the group, the soldier is talking to one of the civilians, a man with a moustache.
Freeze.
Enlargement.
This man is Dr Carl Wepener Lourens, then head of a South African company
called TechPharma Global, an importer of chemicals. Lourens moved in white
South Africa’s highest military and political circles and travelled the world,
frequently visiting Britain, the United States and Israel. His death in a fire at his
company’s premises outside Pretoria was reported recently. He was under investigation
for currency and other offences committed under the apartheid regime.
Dr Lourens is also linked with an Israeli company called Ashken, said to be an
Israeli military front engaged in defence research.
