Old Enemies (2 page)

Casey sat next to Ruari, facing the rear of the helicopter, with Mattias and the stranger opposite. Their knees almost touched, there was so little room. Outside, through the open door hatch, the scenery grew more rugged and spectacular as they climbed past the treeline and up towards the peaks. She pulled out a camera and began taking photographs, wanting to share the experience with her grandmother. The view of Villars was extraordinary, with wood smoke rising from the chimneys of its huddled chalets, while beyond she could see the valley of the river Rhone as it thrust its way towards Lake Geneva, with its power-station chimney standing tall and steaming. In the great distance were the French Alps, where ribbons of ice crystals were being blown from the mountain tops like the fluttering of Tibetan prayer scarves, while behind her, Casey knew, in the direction they were flying, lay the peaks of Les Diablerets and the town of Gstaad, where her mother had taken her shopping only a few weeks earlier, before the snows came and blocked the pass. It was where she had bought the silk purse. Her fingers searched for it once more, beneath the folds of her ski suit, and she nestled closer to Ruari.

Casey had lost herself in the beauty, the noise, her rising sense of expectation, when she felt Ruari stiffen. His body tensed. He reached for her hand and squeezed it, too hard, so that she almost yelped in discomfort. It was only when she followed the direction of his gaze that she saw why. The faceless stranger who sat opposite him had turned in his seat. He had taken off his glove and in his bare hand he was now holding a pistol. It was aimed at Mattias’s chest, barely two feet away. Casey didn’t understand; there had been no argument, no raised voices. Even Mattias was looking on with an expression that suggested more confusion than concern.

‘Stand up,’ the stranger mouthed at Mattias. The words were flung away in the downdraught yet their meaning was unmistakable.

The guide shrugged his shoulders, indicated his seat harness, still assuming this was some sort of pathetic joke. Then he saw the finger tighten on the trigger, only fractionally, but it was enough to persuade him that it would be unwise to test the stranger’s sense of humour too far. Cautiously, not taking his eyes from the snub nose of the gun, he unclipped his safety belt and edged along the bench, trying to put a few more inches between him and danger.

The helicopter flew on, ever higher.

The gunman jerked the barrel, once, twice; with desperate slowness Mattias rose to his feet. His head was bowed, he couldn’t stand full height in the cramped cabin. His eyes turned towards the pilot’s compartment, hoping his friend had witnessed everything and would intervene. What he saw there made him suddenly sick. That’s when he knew he was a dead man.

He was beginning to rage inside with the injustice of it all when, even above the racket of the engine and rushing air, he heard Casey scream. At the same moment he felt a horse kick him in the chest, smashing through his sternum. His breastbone was no match for a 9mm slug fired from a semi-automatic. It didn’t hurt, there was no pain, only numbness, which was flushing all the way down through his bowels. His knees were buckling. That made him angry; he was a mountain man, his legs were his life. He was still filling up with anger when, at more than six thousand feet, his knees gave way and he tumbled backwards into oblivion.

The pilot hadn’t been in any position to help his friend Mattias. He was already dead. He’d been flying on a path that had his craft rising straight and steady through the mountain air when the passenger in the left-hand seat reached over and twisted the lever that engaged the autopilot controls. The pilot had barely enough time to blurt out a protest before he died. Two bullets. No one in the rear passenger compartment heard the sharp retorts, no one saw what was happening on the other side of the bulkhead until Mattias stood up and noticed the pilot slumped over his controls, but by then it was already too late. Afterwards there was nothing more than a slight kick of the aircraft, like hitting a small air pocket, to betray the fact that the autopilot had been disengaged. The passenger up front now had control.

In the compartment behind him, the three remaining passengers were lost in their own individual worlds. Casey was old enough for love but far too young for death, even to comprehend its meaning, yet suddenly her world was overflowing with it. She couldn’t stop screaming. The helicopter had become a coffin.

Beside her, Ruari was bent forward, straining against his harness, his senses focused on the gunman so close at hand. They both knew that if Ruari found the chance he would hurl himself at the attacker, even though the man was fifty pounds heavier and nearly half a foot taller, but Ruari wouldn’t get that chance, not stuck in his harness. The attacker stared from behind his sunglasses, his face a mask drained of emotion.

All the while the noise from the engine and the rotors were beating down upon Casey, numbing her mind, driving her fear still deeper inside her until it caught her senses and sent them tumbling. One instinct consumed her; she had to survive, to get away from this danger. She fumbled with the lock of her safety belt, releasing the catch, sinking to her knees as she struggled to breathe. Suddenly Ruari reached for her, trying to help, to hold her, but it was too late, she was slumped on the floor, crawling away, her ski boots slipping as she struggled.

But there was nowhere to go. She sprawled nearer the access hatch but didn’t dare move any closer. She whimpered, raised her head, looked at the gunman.

‘Please,’ she whispered.

He made no move. The gun remained pointed at Ruari. It seemed as if Casey was of no importance to him.

Beyond the hatch she could see the mountaintops that had so excited her and the vast blue void that filled the spaces between. The helicopter twitched, she sank still lower to the floor, reached out to grab one of the metal supports beneath the seats, clinging to it in fear, afraid to move in any direction.

‘Please!’ she begged once more. She began to scream, piercing cries that not even the pounding of the rotors could suppress. Ruari’s hand stretched out once more, shaking as he strained for her, but still he couldn’t reach. The pitiful screaming continued. She was a young girl, in terror, pleading for her innocent life.

Then the helicopter banked sharply, like a fairground ride, until it was almost on its side. For a moment the screaming stopped as Casey needed all her strength to cling to the seat support, fighting the gravity that wanted to break her grasp and rip her free. She was losing the struggle. She slipped, a few inches, then a little more. Her boots were no longer scrabbling on the floor, they were dangling over the edge of the compartment, outside, in the void. No matter how Ruari strained, time and again, he couldn’t get to her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t save her. Her lips twisted into shapes they were never meant to make, while her hazel eyes drowned in terror.

And at last, although it was only seconds, her fingers gave way. There was nothing to hold her any longer. She was tossed from the helicopter like a sweet wrapper in the wind. That was when she started screaming again, more pitifully than ever, but this time there was no one to hear.

The Eastern Highlands, Zimbabwe

The events that led up to what took place in the Swiss mountains began in another time zone and on a different continent less than five weeks earlier. The chronology would eventually turn out to be important. The matters that were put in motion typically required months to plan, but time was to prove a particularly inflexible factor. Corners were bound to be cut, knuckles scraped.

Moses Willard Chombo stood at the window of his retreat perched in the hills of his country’s Eastern Highlands and snorted in frustration. It was eighty degrees, the humidity that was so unexpected in these elevated parts made him short of breath and the rain that had been threatening all morning was now tearing itself from the sky and trying to batter its way through the roof. He couldn’t even see as far as the military gatehouse at the entrance to his compound; the only immediate sign of life was a column of ants clinging to the outside of the window frame. Even the weather made him feel impotent.

Chombo was a significant man but he was one who, in his own mind, was not yet significant enough. He was the Mr Meanwhile, His Acting Excellency, the President
pro tem
of his battered country, and the temporary nature of his title made him feel about as uncomfortable as a secondhand shoe. He had been one of Robert Mugabe’s deputies and had emerged from the dung heap left behind by that profoundly psychotic despot to squeeze into the dead man’s chair, but only until elections in three months’ time could confirm a proper and fully empowered successor. Chombo hoped very much that proper and fully empowered successor would be him. He needed only to win an election and was in an excellent position to do so, but Zimbabwe was still a deeply troubled country, exhausted by the years of Mugabe’s madness, and the acting President’s mood was as overcast as the skies. He was watching a waterspout erupt from the gutter and cascade onto the lawn, where it was tearing at the roots of a hibiscus bush, when he heard a door open behind him. The wooden frame was swollen and warped, the hinges complained, like everything in this country, and through it came Takere, the head of the President’s personal guard. Behind him were two white men, in their late thirties, neatly dressed and well-muscled.

‘You are late,’ Chombo remarked in Shona, the language he shared with Takere. It was more observation than rebuke. The President was a big man with an ox’s chest who didn’t rush to judgement, the sort of man who preferred to seek salvation and revenge in his own time. It was a caution that had held him back all these years while others had rushed into the hands of the death squads.

‘My apologies. There are more potholes than tarmac on the roads out of Harare,’ Takere responded, cautious, with a tightness in his lips that made him lisp. He was nervous, sweating, despite the fan that churned the air above his head. ‘Mr President, this is—’

But a wave of Chombo’s hand cut short Takere’s introductions. ‘We need no names, not for a meeting that has never happened. Have you searched them?’

‘Of course.’

‘Search them again.’

‘But—’

Yet even as Takere made his protest, the shorter of the two men had raised his hands to the back of his head and patiently spread his feet. His face bore the marks of exposure to the African sun, his ears looked chewed and hugged his skull, making it appear streamlined, an impression enhanced by his close-cropped hair that was thinning, and fading red. The eyes were of the palest grey, like openings in a frozen lake, and gave no warmth. His willingness in submitting to the fresh search showed that he understood Chombo’s language and felt no need to keep the fact secret. Takere patted him down, then turned to the other man, who was broader in both shoulder and belly and whose sleek, greying hair and expensive shoes suggested a softer and more blunted lifestyle. Again Takere found nothing.

‘You will understand the need for caution,’ Chombo said, this time in English.

‘That’s why I fly El Al,’ the red-haired man said. ‘It never gets blown out of the sky. And why? Because it gives a damn, like you.’ His accent was clipped, rolling from the tip of his tongue, South African.

‘You address him as Your Excellency or Mr President,’ Takere said sharply, taking exception to the man’s relaxed tone. ‘You show him respect.’

The ice eyes stared at Chombo, examining the black leader’s face, whose every feature – lips, nostrils, cheeks, eyes – seemed too large for comfort. The prominent brow gave Chombo the appearance of having a permanent scowl.

‘Respect?’ the white man said slowly – he always talked slowly, as though he was never in a rush. ‘That is a rare commodity in this part of the world. But I assure you, my respect for the President is every bit as great as any he has for me.’

Takere twitched in agitation but Chombo burst out laughing. Flies would seek a second opinion before settling on this man, the President decided. His mind ran back to Micklethwaite, the visiting British Minister, a man of phenomenally damp palms and absolutely no trace of respect.

‘Yes, the West will give you aid, enough of it to transform your blighted country,’ Micklethwaite had explained over tea in the ostentatious glass-fronted embassy that looked out along Harare’s Norfolk Road. ‘Zimbabwe can become the flower of Africa once more.’

‘Then we shall be grateful.’

‘There are conditions.’

‘Of course.’ There were always conditions.

‘These upcoming elections of yours, they must be fair and free, and seen to be so. You understand that. Not like in Mugabe’s time. None of us wants to go back to the old days.’

‘Mr Micklethwaite, you sanctimonious and limp-wristed white bastard,’ Chombo had thought, but did not say. Instead he had offered a generous smile. ‘Mr Micklethwaite, I can lay my hand on my heart’ – he had done so with an exaggerated gesture – ‘and assure you that there is nothing I want more than for my country to make a fresh start with you and our other Western friends. But . . .’ There were always buts, too. ‘I must ask for a little patience. We have our customs.’