[ebooktalk] Wilbur smith

• From: "David Russelll" <david.russell8@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: <ebooktalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 09:41:26 +0100

Hi

Attached is the new Wilbur smith book.


David

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Begin Reading

Copyright





This book is for my wife

MOKHINISO

who is the best thing

that has ever happened to me





HE CAME FULLY AWAKE before he moved or opened his eyes. He lay for a second 
assessing his situation, checking for danger, his warrior instincts taking 
control. Then he smelled her delicate perfume and heard her breathing as softly 
and regularly as the dying surf running up a distant beach. All was well, and 
he smiled and opened his eyes. Gently he rolled his head so as not to awaken 
her.

The early sun had found a chink in the curtains and through it had laid a 
sliver of beaten gold across the ceiling. It cast an intriguing light on her 
face and form. She lay on her back. Her face was in repose and it was lovely. 
She had kicked off the sheet and she was naked. The golden curls covering her 
mons Veneris were a shade darker than the splendid tangle of the locks that had 
fallen over her face. Now, so far along in her pregnancy, her bosoms were 
swollen to almost twice their normal size. He let his gaze drift down to her 
belly. The skin was stretched tight and glossy by the precious cargo it 
contained. As he stared at it he saw the small movement as the child stirred 
within her womb and his breathing was stifled for an instant by the weight and 
strength of his love for them both, his woman and his child.

‘Stop staring at my big fat belly and give me a kiss,’ she said without 
opening her eyes. He chuckled and leaned over her. She reached up with both 
arms around his neck and as her lips parted he smelled her sweet breath. After 
a while she whispered into his open mouth, ‘Can’t you keep this monster of 
yours on a leash?’ She reached down with one hand to his groin. ‘Even he 
must know that at the moment there is no room at the inn.’

‘Colour him brainless,’ he said. ‘But you have never been any great help 
in keeping him under control. Unhand me, you brazen wench!’

‘Just wait a few weeks and I will show you the true meaning of the word 
brazen, Hector Cross,’ she warned him. ‘Now ring down to the kitchen for 
coffee.’

While they waited for the coffee to be delivered he left the bed and drew back 
the curtains, letting the sunlight burst into the room.

‘The swans are in the Mill Pool,’ he called to her. She struggled upright 
using both hands to cradle her belly. He came back to her immediately and 
helped her to her feet. She picked up her blue satin bed robe from the chair 
and slipped into it as they crossed to the picture window.

‘I feel so ungainly!’ she complained as she tied the belt. He stood behind 
her and with both hands reached around and gently cradled her belly.

‘Somebody is kicking again,’ Hector whispered into her ear and then took 
the lobe between his teeth and nibbled it lightly.

‘Don’t tell me. I feel like a ruddy football.’ She reached back over her 
shoulder and lightly slapped his cheek. ‘Don’t do that. You know it gives 
me goose bumps all over.’

They looked down at the swans in silence. The cob and the pen were a dazzling 
white in the early sunlight, but the three cygnets were a grubby grey. The cob 
dipped his long sinuous neck into the green waters and reached down to feed on 
the aquatic plants at the bottom of the pool.

‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ he asked at last.

‘They are just one of the many reasons I love England,’ Hazel whispered. 
‘What a perfect scene. We should have a good artist paint it.’

The river spilled into the pool over a stone weir and the waters were limpid. 
They could look down ten feet and see the shadows of the big trout lying on the 
gravel bottom. Willows lined the banks and brushed the surface with their 
trailing fingers. The meadow beyond was a luscious green and the sheep grazing 
on it were as white as the swans.

‘It’s the perfect place to raise our little girl. You know that’s why I 
bought it.’ She sighed contentedly.

‘I know that. You’ve told me often enough. What I don’t know is what 
makes you so certain this is a girl.’ He caressed her stomach. ‘Don’t you 
really want to know for certain the gender, instead of just guessing?’

‘I am not guessing. I know,’ she said smugly and covered his large brown 
hands with her slim white ones.

‘We could ask Alan when we get up to London this morning,’ he suggested. 
Alan Donnovan was her gynaecologist.

‘You are an awful nag. But don’t you dare ask Alan and spoil my fun. Now 
put on your dressing gown. You don’t want to terrify poor Mary when she comes 
with the coffee,’ she said fondly.

Moments later there was a discreet knock on the door. ‘Come!’ said Hector 
and the chambermaid carried in the coffee tray.

‘Good morning to all! How are you and the baby, Mrs Cross?’ she said in her 
cheerful Irish brogue, placing the tray on the table.

‘All is well, Mary, but do I spy biscuits on that tray?’ Hazel demanded.

‘Only three small ones.’

‘Take them away, please.’

‘Two for Sir and just one for you. Plain oatmeal. No sugar,’ Mary wheedled.

‘Be a darling, Mary. Humour me. Take them away, please.’

‘Poor little mite must be starving,’ Mary grumbled but she picked up the 
biscuit dish and marched from the room. Hazel sat on the sofa and poured a 
single mug of coffee so black and strong that its aroma filled the room.

‘God! It smells so good,’ she said wistfully as she handed it to him. Then 
she poured warm unsweetened skimmed milk into her own porcelain cup.

‘Ugh!’ she exclaimed with disgust as she tasted it, but she drank it down 
like medicine. ‘So how are you going to keep yourself busy while I am with 
Alan? You know he will take at least a couple of hours. He’s very thorough.’

‘I have to take my shotguns to Paul Roberts for storage, and then I have a 
suit fitting with my tailor.’

‘You aren’t going to drive my beautiful Ferrari around in the London 
morning traffic, are you? You’d probably give it a ding, same as you did to 
the Rolls.’

‘Will you never forget that?’ He spread his hands in mock outrage. ‘The 
silly woman jumped the lights and drove into me.’

‘You drive like a maniac, Cross, and you know it.’

‘Okay, I’ll take a cab to do my errands,’ he promised. ‘I don’t want 
to look like a football player in that poncey machine of yours. Anyway, my new 
Range Rover is waiting for me. Stratstone’s phoned me yesterday to let me 
know that it’s ready. If you are a good girl, which we all know you are, 
I’ll take you to lunch in it.’

‘Talking about lunch, where are we going?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know why I bother. We can get lettuce leaves anywhere, but I 
reserved our usual table at Alfred’s Club.’

‘Now I know you really love me!’

‘You had better believe it, skinny.’

‘Compliments! Compliments!’ She gave him a beatific smile.

*

Hazel’s red Ferrari coupé was parked under the portico that sheltered the 
front door. It sparkled like an enormous ruby in the sunlight. Robert, her 
chauffeur, had polished it lovingly. It was his favourite amongst all the many 
cars parked in the underground garage. Hector made an arm for her down the 
front steps and helped her into the driver’s seat. When she had wriggled her 
belly in behind the wheel he fussed over her, getting the adjustment of the 
seat just right and the safety belt comfortably looped under her bump.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?’ he asked solicitously.

‘Never,’ she replied. ‘Not after all the horrid things you said about 
her.’ She patted the steering wheel. ‘Get in and let’s go.’

It was three-quarters of a mile from the manor house to the public highway, but 
the estate road was paved all the way. Where it looped into the approach to the 
bridge over the River Test there was a fine view back to the house. Hazel 
pulled over for a moment. She could seldom resist the temptation to gloat over 
what she humbly referred to as ‘simply the finest Georgian building in 
existence’.

Brandon Hall had been built in 1752 by Sir William Chambers for the Earl of 
Brandon. He was the same architect who had built Somerset House on The Strand. 
Brandon Hall had been shamefully neglected and rundown when Hazel acquired it. 
When Hector thought about how much money she had lavished upon the house to 
bring it to its present state of perfection he could barely suppress a shudder. 
However, he could never deny the beauty of its elegant and perfectly balanced 
lines. Last year Hazel had been placed seventh on Forbes magazine’s list of 
the richest women in the world. She could afford it.

Still and all, what woman in her right mind needs sixteen bedrooms, for God’s 
sake? But the hell with expense, the fishing in the river is truly great. Worth 
every dollar, he consoled himself silently. ‘Come on, baby,’ he said aloud. 
‘You can admire it on your way back, but right now you are going to be late 
for your appointment with Alan.’

‘I do so enjoy a challenge,’ she said sweetly, and pulled away leaving 
black rubber burns on the tarmac surface behind her and a pale blue cloud of 
smoke hanging in the air.

When she reversed effortlessly into the underground parking bay beneath the 
Harley Street building, from which Alan Donnovan had removed his own vehicle to 
make room for hers, she glanced at her wristwatch.

‘One hour forty-eight minutes! I do believe that’s my personal best time to 
date. Fifteen minutes ahead of my appointment. Would you like to retract that 
gibe about me being late, smarty-pants?’

‘One day you are going to hit a radar trap and they are going to pull your 
driver’s licence, my beloved.’

‘Mine is a US licence. These sweet Brit cops can’t touch it.’

Hector escorted her up to Alan’s suite. As soon as he heard her voice, Alan 
came out of his consulting room to welcome her; a rare show of respect he 
generally accorded only to royalty. He paused in the doorway to admire her. 
Hazel’s loose-fitting maternity gown in soft Sea Island cotton had been 
especially designed for her. Her eyes sparkled and her skin glowed. Alan bowed 
over her hand and touched it to his lips.

‘If all my patients were as patently healthy as you I would be out of a 
job,’ he murmured.

‘How long are you going to keep her, Alan?’ Hector shook hands with him.

‘I can readily understand why you are so eager to have her back.’

Such levity was seldom Alan’s style, but Hector chuckled and insisted, 
‘When?’

‘I want to run some checks and possibly consult my associates. Give me two 
and a half hours, will you please, Hector?’ He took Hazel’s arm and led her 
into his inner chambers. Hector watched the door close. He stared after her. He 
was overwhelmed by a sudden premonition of impending loss such as he had seldom 
experienced before. He wanted to go after her, and bring her back and hold her 
close to his heart for ever. It took a long moment for him to recover himself.

‘Don’t be a bloody idiot. Take a hold of yourself, Cross.’ He turned away 
and went out into the passage and headed towards the lifts.

*

Alan Donnovan’s receptionist watched him go impassively. She was a pretty 
Afro-British girl with big sparkling dark eyes and a good figure under her 
white uniform. Her name was Victoria Vusamazulu and she was twenty-seven years 
old. She waited until she heard the elevator stop at the end of the passage and 
the doors open and close behind Hector as he stepped into it, then she brought 
her mobile phone out of her coat pocket. She had punched his phone number into 
her list of contacts under the name ‘Him!’ The phone rang once only and she 
heard the click on the line.

‘Hello. Is that you, Aleutian?’ she asked.

‘I told you not to name names, bitch.’ She shivered when he called her 
that. He was so masterful. He was unlike any man she had known before. 
Instinctively her hand went to her left breast. It was bruised and still tender 
where he had bitten her last night. She rubbed it and the nipple hardened.

‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’ Her voice was husky.

‘Then don’t forget to delete this call when we finish. Now tell me! Has she 
come?’

‘Yes, she is here. But her husband has gone out. He told Doctor that he would 
return at one thirty.’

‘Good!’ he said, and the line went dead. The girl took the phone from her 
ear and stared at it. She found that she was breathing hard. She thought about 
him; how hard and thick he was when he was inside her. She looked down at 
herself and felt the warmth oozing through the crotch of her panties onto her 
thighs.

‘Hot as a dirty little bitch in heat,’ she whispered. That was what he had 
called her last night. Doctor would not need her for a while, he was busy with 
the Cross woman. She left the reception room and went down the passage to the 
toilet. She locked herself in one of the cubicles. Then she pulled her skirts 
up around her waist and dropped her panties around her ankles. She sat on the 
toilet seat and spread her knees. She put her hand down there. She wanted to 
make it last, but as soon as she touched her hot switch she could not hold 
back. It was so quick and so intense that it left her gasping and shaking.

*

Two hours later Hector returned and ensconced himself in a leather armchair in 
the waiting room facing Alan’s door. He picked up a copy of the Financial 
Times from the side table and turned to the FTSE reports. He did not even 
glance up as the intercom rang on the receptionist’s desk. She spoke softly 
into the receiver and then hung up.

‘Mr Cross,’ she called across to him. ‘Mr Donnovan would like to have a 
few words with you. Please would you go through to his room?’ Hector dropped 
the newspaper and jumped up from the armchair. Again he felt the quick stab of 
anxiety. He had learned over the years to trust his instincts. What dire news 
did Alan have for him? He hurried across the waiting room and knocked on the 
inner door. Alan’s muffled voice bid him enter. The consulting room was 
panelled in oak and the shelves were lined with sets of leather-bound medical 
volumes. Alan sat behind a vast antique desk and Hazel faced him. She stood up 
as Hector entered and came to meet him, pushing her big belly ahead of her. She 
was smiling radiantly and that allayed Hector’s premonitions of disaster. He 
embraced her.

‘Everything all right?’ he demanded, and looked at Alan over Hazel’s 
shining blonde head.

‘Tickety-boo! Calm seas and fair winds!’ Alan assured him. ‘Take a seat, 
both of you.’ They sat side by side and stared at him with full attention. He 
removed his spectacles and polished them with a piece of chamois leather.

‘Okay, shoot!’ Hector encouraged him.

‘The baby is doing just fine, but Hazel isn’t so young any more.’

‘None of us are,’ Hector agreed. ‘But ever so kind of you to mention it, 
Alan.’

‘The baby is just about ready to make its move, but perhaps Hazel might need 
a little bit of a hand.’

‘Caesarean?’ she asked with alarm.

‘Dear me, no!’ Alan assured her. ‘Nothing so extreme. What I have in mind 
is an induction of labour.’

‘Explain please, Alan,’ Hector insisted.

‘Hazel is in her fortieth week of gestation. She will be good and ready by 
the end of this coming week. The two of you are stuck out in the wilds of 
darkest Hampshire. How long does it take you to get up to London?’

‘Two and a half hours is good time,’ Hector replied. ‘Some drivers with 
heavy right feet do it in under two.’

Hazel pulled a face at him.

‘I want you to move up to your town house in Belgravia immediately.’ Alan 
had been a dinner guest there on more than one occasion. ‘I am going to book 
Hazel into a private ward in the Portland Maternity Hospital in Great Portland 
Street for Thursday this week. It’s one of the leading establishments in the 
country. If she goes into spontaneous labour before Thursday you will only be 
fifteen minutes away from it. If nothing happens by Friday I will give Hazel a 
little injection and pop goes the weasel, so to speak.’

Hector turned to her. ‘How do you feel about that, my darling?’

‘That suits me just fine. The sooner the quicker, as far as I am concerned. 
Everything is ready for us in the London house. I just need to pick up a few 
things, like the book I am reading, and we can move back into town tomorrow.’

‘That’s it, then,’ said Alan briskly and stood up behind his desk. ‘See 
you both on Friday at the latest.’

On their way through the waiting room Hazel stopped in front of the 
receptionist’s desk and rummaged around in her handbag. She brought out a 
gift-wrapped bottle of Chanel perfume and placed it in front of the 
receptionist.

‘Just a little thank you, Victoria. You have been so sweet.’

‘Oh, you are too kind, Mrs Cross. But you really shouldn’t have!’

As they rode down in the lift Hazel asked him, ‘Did you get your Range Rover 
from Stratstone?’

‘It’s parked just across the street; I will take you to lunch in her and 
bring you back afterwards to pick up your old can of rust.’ She punched his 
shoulder and led the way out of the building.

He took her arm crossing Harley Street and the taxi drivers coming from both 
directions, seeing how pretty and pregnant she was, braked sharply to a 
standstill. One of them leaned out of his window, grinning. He signalled at her 
to cross in front of his taxi and called out to her, ‘Best of luck, luv! Bet 
it’s a boy!’

Hazel waved back. ‘I’ll let you know.’

None of them noticed the motorcycle parked in a loading zone a hundred yards up 
the street behind them. Both the driver and his pillion passenger wore gloves 
and helmets with darkened perspex visors which hid their faces. As Hazel and 
Hector reached the parked Rover the motorcyclist jumped on the kick starter and 
the engine of the powerful Japanese machine under him burbled to life. The 
pillion passenger lifted his booted feet onto the footrests, ready to go. 
Hector opened the passenger door for Hazel and handed her up into the seat. 
Then he moved briskly around to the driver’s side. He jumped in, started the 
engine and pulled out into the traffic stream. The motorcyclist waited until 
there were five vehicles separating them and then he followed. He maintained 
the separation discreetly. They went around Marble Arch and down to Berkeley 
Square. When the Rover drew up in front of No. 2 Davies Street the motorcyclist 
rode on past and turned left at the next road junction. He circled the block 
and stopped when he had a view of the front of Alfred’s Club. He saw at once 
that the doorman had parked the Rover a little further up the street.

*

Mario, the restaurant manager, was waiting at the entrance to greet them, 
beaming with pleasure. ‘Welcome, Mr and Mrs Cross, but it’s been far too 
long.’

‘Nonsense, Mario,’ Hector contradicted him. ‘We were here ten days ago 
with Lord Renwick.’

‘That’s far too long ago, sir,’ Mario protested and led them to their 
favourite table.

The room went silent as they passed down it. All eyes followed them. Everybody 
knew who they were. Even in advanced pregnancy Hazel looked magnificent. The 
gossamer skirt billowed around her like a rose-coloured cloud, and the handbag 
she carried was one of those crocodile-skin creations which made every other 
woman in the room consider suicide.

Mario seated her and murmured, ‘May I presume that it will be the grapefruit 
salad for madame, followed by the grilled St Jacques? And for you, Mr Cross, 
the steak tartare, followed by the lobster with Chardonnay sauce?’

‘As usual, Mario,’ Hector agreed seriously. ‘To drink, Mrs Cross will 
have a small bottle of Perrier water with a bucket of ice. Please fetch a 
bottle of the Vosne-Romanée Aux Malconsorts 1993 from my personal wine keep 
for me.’

‘I have already taken the liberty of doing so, Mr Cross. Fifteen minutes ago 
I checked that the temperature of the bottle is sixteen degrees centigrade. 
Shall I have the sommelier open it?’

‘Thank you, Mario. I know I can always rely on you.’

‘We try our best to please, sir.’

As the manager left them Hazel leaned across and placed her hand on Hector’s 
forearm. ‘I do so love your little rituals, Mr Cross. Somehow I find them 
very comforting.’ She smiled. ‘Cayla also used to find them amusing. Do you 
remember how we laughed when she imitated you?’

‘Like mother, like daughter.’ Hector smiled at her.

There had been a period when Hazel had not been able to say the name 
‘Cayla’ out loud. That had been from the time of her daughter’s brutal 
slaying and the mutilation of her corpse by her killers until she had 
discovered that she was pregnant with Hector’s child. That had been a 
catharsis and she had wept in his arms and blurted out the name. ‘Cayla! 
It’s going to be another little Cayla,’ she’d sobbed. After that the 
wounds had healed swiftly until she could talk about Cayla easily and often.

She wanted to talk now and when the sommelier had brought her Perrier water she 
sipped it and asked, ‘Do you suppose Catherine Cayla Cross will have blonde 
hair and blue eyes like her big sister did?’ She had already chosen the new 
infant’s name as a tribute to her dead first child.

‘He will probably have black stubble on his chin like his father,’ Hector 
teased her. He also had loved the murdered girl. Cayla had been the magnet that 
had first brought them together against all the odds. Hector had been head of 
security at Bannock Oil when Hazel had inherited control of the company from 
her late husband.

From the start Hazel had detested Hector, despite the fact that he had been 
appointed by her own beloved deceased husband. She knew Hector’s record and 
reputation intimately and was repelled by the hard and sometimes brutal tactics 
he used to defend the company assets and personnel from any threat. He was a 
soldier and he fought like one. He showed no mercy. He flew in the face of all 
Hazel’s gentler female instincts. At their very first meeting she warned him 
that she was looking for the slightest excuse to fire him.

Then Hazel’s cosseted and privileged existence was plunged into chaos. The 
daughter who was the cornerstone of her solitary existence was kidnapped by 
African pirates. Hazel exerted all her vast fortune and her influence in high 
places to try to rescue her. No one could help her, not even the President of 
the United States of America with all his power. They could not even discover 
where her Cayla was being held. At her wits’ end, she had cast aside her 
pride and gone back to the cruel, brutal and merciless soldier she so hated and 
despised: Hector Cross.

Hector had tracked down the kidnappers to their den in the fastness of the 
African deserts where Cayla was being held. She was being brutally tortured by 
her captors. Hector had gone in with his men and brought Cayla back to safety. 
In the process he had demonstrated to Hazel that he was a thoroughly decent 
person of high principles; somebody that she could trust without reserve. She 
had given in to the attraction she had so carefully suppressed at their first 
meeting and once she had got closer to him she discovered that under his 
armour-plated exterior he could be warm and gentle and loving.

She looked at him now and she reached across the table to take his hand. 
‘With you beside me and baby Catherine Cayla inside me, everything is perfect 
again.’

‘It will be like this for ever,’ he assured her and another tiny frisson of 
dread ran up his spine as he realized he was tempting the fates. Though he 
smiled tenderly at her, he was brooding on how the rescue of Cayla had not been 
the end of the affair either. The fanatics who had seized her had not given up. 
Their hired thugs had come back and murdered Cayla and sent her decapitated 
head to Hazel. Hector and Hazel had been forced to re-enter the fray and 
finally eradicate the monster who had ruined their lives.

Perhaps this time it is really over, he thought as he watched Hazel’s face. 
She went on talking about Cayla.

‘Do you remember how you taught her to fish?’

‘She was a natural. With just a little coaching she could cast a salmon fly 
at least a hundred and fifty feet in most wind conditions and she instinctively 
knew how to read the waters.’

‘What about the big salmon the two of you landed in Norway?’

‘It was a monster. I was hanging on to her belt, and it almost pulled us both 
into the river.’ He chuckled.

‘I’ll never forget the day she announced that she was not going to be an 
art dealer, the career I had planned for her, but that she had decided to 
become a veterinary surgeon. I nearly had a blue fit!’

‘That was very naughty of her.’ Hector pronounced judgement with a stern 
expression.

‘Naughty? You were the naughty one. You backed her up all the way. The two of 
you talked me right into it.’

‘Tut. Tut. She was such a bad influence on me,’ Hector admitted.

‘She loved you. You know that. She really loved you like her own father.’

‘That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.’

‘You are a good man, Hector Cross.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. 
‘Catherine Cayla is going to love you also. All three of your girls love 
you.’ She gasped suddenly and clutched her stomach. ‘Oh my God! She gave me 
a mule kick. She obviously agrees with what I just said.’ They both burst out 
laughing so that the guests at the other tables looked around at them, smiling 
in sympathy. However, they might just as well have been alone in the room. They 
were totally engrossed by each other.

They had so much to remember and discuss. Both of them had filled their lives 
with strivings and endeavour. They had both experienced soaring triumphs and 
shattering disasters, but Hazel’s career had been by far the more 
spectacular. She had started out with little more than guts and determination. 
At the age of nineteen she had won her first Grand Slam tournament on the 
professional tennis tour. At twenty-one she had married the oil tycoon Henry 
Bannock and borne him a daughter. Henry had died when Hazel was almost thirty 
years old and left control of the Bannock Oil conglomerate to her.

The world of big business is an exclusive domain. Intruders and upstarts are 
not welcome there. Nobody wanted to bet on a sometime 
tennis-player-cum-society-glamour-girl-turned-oil-baroness. However none of 
them had taken into account Hazel’s innate business acumen, nor the years of 
her tutelage under Henry Bannock, which were worth a hundred MBA degrees. Like 
the crowds at the Roman circus, her detractors and critics waited in grisly 
anticipation for her to be devoured by the lions. Then, to the chagrin of all, 
she brought in the Zara No. 8.

Hector remembered vividly how Forbes magazine had blazoned on its front cover 
the image of Hazel in her white tennis kit, holding a racquet in her right 
hand. The headline above the photograph read ‘Hazel Bannock aces the 
opposition. Richest oil strike in thirty years.’

The story described how in the bleak hinterland of the godforsaken and 
impoverished little emirate named Abu Zara lay an oil concession once owned by 
the Shell Oil Company. In the period directly after World War II, Shell had 
pumped the reservoir dry and abandoned the exhausted concession. Since then it 
had lain forgotten.

Then Hazel had picked it up for a few paltry millions of dollars and the 
pundits nudged each other and smirked. Ignoring the protests of her advisors, 
she spent many millions more in sinking a rotary cone drill into a tiny 
subterranean anomaly at the northern extremity of the field; an anomaly which 
with the more primitive exploration techniques of thirty years previously had 
been reckoned to be an ancillary of the main reservoir. The geologists of that 
time had agreed that any oil contained in this area had long ago drained into 
the main reservoir and been pumped to the surface, leaving the entire field dry 
and worthless.

However, when Hazel’s drilling team pierced the impervious salt dome of the 
diapir, a vast subterranean chamber in which the principal oil deposits had 
been trapped, the gas overpressure roared up through the drill hole with such 
force that it ejected almost eight kilometres of steel drill string like 
toothpaste from the tube, and the hole blew out. High-grade crude oil spurted 
hundreds of feet into the air. At last it became evident that the old Zara 1 to 
7 fields which Shell had abandoned were only a fraction of the total reserves.

Recalling all this seemed to draw them closer to each other over the lunch 
table, fascinated by the reminiscences they had repeated many times before but 
in which they still discovered things totally new and intriguing. At one point 
Hector shook his head in admiration. ‘My God, woman! Have you never been 
daunted by anything or anybody in your life? You have done it all on your own, 
and you have done it the hard way.’

She slanted her startling eyes at him and smiled. ‘Don’t you see, life was 
never meant to be easy; if it was, we would place no real value on it. Now 
that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you.’

‘You already know everything there is to know about me. I have told you fifty 
times over.’

‘Okay, let’s make it fifty-one. Tell me about the day on which you took 
your lion. I want all the details again. Take care. I will know if you leave 
anything out.’

‘Very well, here I go. I was born in Kenya, but my dad and mum were both 
Brits, so I am a genuine British citizen.’ He paused.

‘Their names were Bob and Sheila…’ she prompted him.

‘Their names were Bob and Sheila Cross. My father had almost twenty-five 
thousand hectares of prime grazing land abutting the Maasai tribal reservation. 
On this he was running over two thousand head of prize Brahman cattle. So my 
boyhood companions were mostly Maasai boys of my own age.’

‘And your little brother, of course,’ said Hazel.

‘Yes, my little brother, Teddy. He wanted to be a rancher, like our father. 
He would do anything to please the old man. On the other hand, I wanted to be a 
warrior like my uncle who had died in the war fighting Rommel at El Alamein in 
the North African desert. The day my father sent me to the Duke of York School 
for boys in Nairobi was the most devastating experience of my life to that 
date.’

‘You hated it, didn’t you?’

‘I hated the rules and the restraint. I was accustomed to running wild and 
free,’ he said.

‘You were a rebel.’

‘My father said I was a rebel and a bloody savage. But he said it with a 
smile. Nevertheless, I was third from top of my class and captain of the first 
fifteen rugby team in my final year at the Duke. That was good enough for me. 
That was when I was sixteen years of age.’

‘The year of your lion!’ She leaned forward across the table and took his 
hand, her eyes shining with anticipation. ‘I love this part. The first part 
is a little tame. Not enough blood and guts, you know.’

‘My Maasai companions were coming of age. So I went to the village and spoke 
to the chief. I told him I wanted to become a Morani with them. A warrior.’

She nodded.

‘The chief listened to everything I asked for. Then he said that I was not a 
true Maasai because I had not been circumcised. He asked if I wanted to be cut 
by the witch doctor. I thought about it and then declined the offer.’

‘And a good job too,’ Hazel said. ‘I prefer your whistle the way that God 
originally designed it.’

‘What a kind thing to say. But to return to the story of my life; I discussed 
this rejection with my companions, and they were almost as distressed by it as 
I was. We argued about it for days and in the end they agreed that if I could 
not become a true Morani, at least I could take my lion, then I would be more 
than halfway a Morani.’

‘But there was just one little problem, wasn’t there?’ she reminded him.

‘The problem was that the Kenyan government, in which the Maasai tribe was 
poorly represented, had banned the lion ceremony of manhood. Lions were now 
strictly protected throughout the entire territory.’

‘But then came some divine intervention,’ she said, and he grinned at her.

‘Straight from heaven!’ he agreed. ‘In the Masai Mara National Park, 
which adjoined the tribal lands, an old lion was driven out of his pride by a 
younger and stronger rival. Without his lionesses to drive the hunt he was 
forced to leave the protection of the park, and to seek easier prey than zebra 
and wildebeest. Firstly, he started on the Maasai cattle herds, which were the 
tribal store of wealth. This was bad enough, but then he killed a young woman 
as she came down to the waterhole to draw water for her family.

‘Much to the joy and feverish excitement of my friends the Maasai, the 
Government Game Department was forced to issue a licence to eradicate the old 
rogue. Because of the links that I had forged with the tribe over the years, 
and because I was big and strong for my age and the elders knew just how hard I 
had trained with the fighting sticks and the war spear, they invited me to join 
the hunt with the other young Morani candidates.’

Hector paused as the sommelier added half an inch of red wine to his glass and 
then topped up the Perrier water in Hazel’s. Hector murmured his thanks and 
then wet his lips with the Burgundy before he continued.

‘The lion had not killed and eaten for almost a week and we all waited in an 
agony of suspense for his hunger to force him to kill again. Then on the sixth 
evening, as the light was fading, two little naked herdboys came racing back to 
the village with the glad tidings. As they were bringing the herd down to the 
waterhole the lion had waylaid them. He had been lying in ambush in the thick 
grass on the downwind side of the path, and he charged out at the herd from a 
range of only ten paces or so. Before the cattle had time to scatter he had 
leapt onto the back of a five-year-old cow that was heavy with calf. He sank 
his fangs into the base of her neck while he reached around with one great paw 
and sank his long yellow claws into her snout. Then he heaved back with all the 
massive strength of his forearm against the lock he had on the cow’s neck. 
The neck vertebrae parted with a crack, killing her instantly. She went down 
nose first as her forelegs collapsed and she somersaulted in a cloud of dust. 
The lion jumped clear before he was crushed by her fifteen hundred pounds of 
dead weight.’

‘I still can’t believe he was strong enough to kill a huge animal so 
easily,’ Hazel said in awed tones.

‘Not only that, but he was able to lift her in his jaws and carry her into 
the grass, holding her so high that only her hooves dragged in the dust.’

‘Go on!’ she urged him. ‘Don’t mind my silly questions. Get on with the 
story!’

‘Well, it was already dark, so we had to wait for the dawn. None of us slept 
much that night. We sat around the fires and the older men told us gleefully 
what to expect when we walked up to the old lion on his kill. There was not 
much laughter from any of us, and our chatter was subdued. It was still dark 
when we dressed in our black goatskin cloaks against the chill of dawn. We were 
naked under the cloaks. We armed ourselves with our rawhide shields and our 
short stabbing spears, which we had sharpened so that we were able to shave the 
hair off our forearms with the bright edge. There were thirty-two of us, a band 
of brothers. We went singing in the dawn to meet our lion.’

‘You’d think that would have warned the lion and driven him away,’ said 
Hazel.

‘It would have taken much more than that to drive a lion off his kill,’ 
Hector told her. ‘We sang a challenge to him. We called him to battle. And of 
course, we bolstered our own courage. We sang and we danced to warm our blood. 
We stabbed at the air with our spears to loosen the muscles of our arms. The 
young unmarried girls followed us at a distance to see who would stand to the 
lion and who would break and run when he came in all his noble might to answer 
our challenge.’

Hazel had heard the story a dozen times already, but she watched his face so 
raptly that it might have been the very first telling of it.

‘The sun came up and showed its upper rim above the horizon directly in front 
of us, bright as molten metal from the furnace. It shone into our faces to 
dazzle us. However, we knew where we would find our lion. We saw the tops of 
the grass move where there was no wind, and then we heard him growl. It was a 
terrible sound that struck into our hearts and into our bowels. Our legs turned 
to water and each dancing pace was a conscious effort as we went forward to 
meet him.

‘Then the lion stood up from where he had lain flat behind the carcass of the 
heifer. His mane was fully erect. It formed a majestic corona around his head. 
It burned with a golden light, for he was vividly backlit by the sun. It seemed 
to double his bulk. He roared. It was a gale of sound that swept over us and 
our own voices faltered for a moment. Then we rallied and shouted back at him, 
calling on him to pick his man and come against him. The flanks of our line 
started to curl in around him, surrounding him and leaving him no escape route. 
He swung his head slowly from side to side, surveying us as we closed in.’

‘Oh God!’ she breathed. ‘I know already what is going to happen, but I 
can barely stand the tension.’

‘Then his head stopped swinging and his tail began to lash from side to side, 
the black tuft on the end of it whipping his own flanks. I was in the middle of 
the line, the place of honour, and I was close enough to see his eyes clearly. 
They were yellow, bright burning yellow, and they were fastened upon me.’

‘Why you, Hector? Why you, my darling?’ She shook his hand urgently, her 
expression filled with dread as though it were happening before her very eyes.

‘God alone knows,’ he shrugged. ‘Perhaps because I was in the middle of 
the line, but most likely because my pale body was shining out from amongst the 
darker bodies that flanked me.’

‘Go on!’ she begged. ‘Tell me again how it ended.’

‘The lion fell into a crouch as he gathered himself for the charge. His tail 
stopped lashing from side to side. He held it straight out behind him, rigid 
and slightly upwardly curled. Then it flicked twice and he came straight at me. 
He came snaking low along the ground, so fast that he was only a tawny streak 
of sunlight, ethereal but deadly.

‘And in those microseconds I learned the true meaning of terror. Everything 
slowed down. The air around me seemed to grow dense and heavy, difficult to 
breathe. It was like being trapped in a thick mud swamp. Every movement 
required a deliberate effort. I knew I was shouting, but the sound seemed to 
come faintly from far away. I braced myself behind the rawhide shield and 
raised the point of my spear. The sunlight caught the burnished metal and sent 
a bright splinter of light into my eyes. The form of the lion swelled up before 
me until it filled all my vision. I aimed the point of my spear at the centre 
of his chest. His chest was pumping as he deafened me with his killing fury, 
mighty gusts of sound like those of a steam locomotive running at full throttle.

‘I braced myself. Then at the final instant before his weight hurtled into my 
shield I leaned into him and caught him on the point of my spear. I let his own 
weight and speed drive the point so deeply into his chest that the spearhead 
and half of the shaft were swallowed up. He was dying as he bore me backwards 
to the earth and crouched on top of me raking the shield with his claws, 
bellowing his rage and agony into my upturned face.’

Hazel shuddered at the picture he had created for her. ‘It’s too horrible! 
I have goose flesh running down both my arms. But don’t stop. Go on, Hector. 
Tell me the end of it.’

‘Then suddenly the lion’s whole body stiffened and he arched his back. With 
his jaws open wide he vomited a copious gout of his heart blood over me, 
drenching my head and my entire upper body before my companions could drag him 
off me and stab him a hundred times over with their own blades.’

‘It terrifies me to think about how differently it could have ended,’ she 
said. ‘How we might never have met each other and shared all that we have 
now. Now, tell me what your father said when you returned to the ranch that 
day,’ she demanded of him.

‘I rode back to the big old thatched-roof ranch house, but it was afternoon 
before I reached it. My family were seated at the lunch table on the front 
stoep. I tethered my horse at the hitching rail and climbed the steps slowly. 
My euphoria evaporated as I saw my family’s faces. I realized then that I had 
not bothered to wash. The lion’s blood had dried thickly in my hair and on my 
skin. My face was a mask of dried blood. It had rubbed off on my clothing, and 
was black on my hands and under my fingernails.

‘My little brother Teddy broke the horrified silence. He giggled like a 
schoolgirl. Teddy was a giggler. At that my mother burst into tears and hid her 
face in her hands; she knew what my father would have to say.

‘He rose to his feet, all six foot two of him, and his face was dark and 
twisted with rage. He choked incoherently on it. Then slowly his expression 
cleared and he said ominously, “You have been with those black savages, your 
bosom chums, have you not, boy?”

‘“Yes, sir,” I admitted. My father was always “sir”; never “Dad”, 
and especially never “Daddy”.

‘“Yes, sir,” I repeated, and suddenly his expression changed.

‘“You have been for your lion, just like a bloody Maasai Morani. That’s 
it. Isn’t it?”

‘“Yes, sir,” I admitted, and my mother burst into fresh gales of tears. 
My father went on staring at me with that odd expression for a long while and I 
stood to attention in front of him. Then he spoke again.

‘“Did you stand or did you break?”

‘“I stood, sir.” Again his long silence, before he spoke again. “Go to 
your rondavel and get yourself cleaned up. Then I will see you in my study.” 
This summons was usually the equivalent of a death sentence or a least a 
hundred lashes.’

‘Then what happened?’ Hazel demanded, although she knew full well.

‘When I knocked at the door of his study a short while later, I was wearing 
my school blazer and tie with a clean white shirt. My shoes were polished and 
my damp hair was slicked down.

‘“Come in!” he bellowed. I marched in and stood in front of his desk.

‘“You are a bloody savage,” he said firmly. “An utterly uncivilized 
savage. I see only one hope for you.”

‘“Yes, sir.” Inwardly I quailed; I thought I knew what was coming.

‘“Sit down, Hector.” He indicated the armchair facing his desk. That 
rocked me. I had never sat in that chair, and I could not remember when last he 
called me Hector, and not boy.

‘When I was seated bolt upright facing him he went on, “You will never make 
a rancher, Hector, will you?”

‘“I doubt it, sir.”

‘“The ranch should have been yours, as the eldest son. But now I am going 
to leave it to Teddy.”

‘“I wish Teddy joy of it, sir,” I said, and he actually smiled, but 
fleetingly.

‘“Of course he will not have it too long,” the old man said, and the 
smile was gone again. “In a very few years we will all be booted out of here 
by the former owners from whom we stole it in the first place. Africa always 
wins in the end.” I was silent. There was no reply I could think of.

‘“But you, young Hector. What shall we do with you?” Again I had no 
answer, and I kept my mouth shut. I had long ago learned that was the safest 
option. He went on speaking. “You will always be a savage at heart, Hector. 
But that is no serious drawback. Most of our revered British heroes, from Clive 
to Kitchener, from Wellington to Churchill, were savages. There would never 
have been a British Empire without them. But I want you to be a well-educated 
and cultivated English savage, so I am sending you to the Royal Military 
Academy at Sandhurst to learn to kick the living shit out of all the lesser 
peoples of this earth.’”

Hazel burst out laughing and clapped her hands. ‘What a remarkable man. He 
must have been completely outrageous.’

‘He was full of bluster, but it was all an act. He wanted to be known as a 
hard man who never backed down, and who always called a spade a bloody shovel. 
But under the veneer he was a kind and decent man. I think he loved me, and I 
certainly worshipped him.’

‘I wish I had known him,’ Hazel said wistfully.

‘Probably much better you didn’t,’ Hector assured her. Then he turned as 
Mario coughed politely at his elbow.

‘Will there be anything further you need, Mr Cross?’ Hector looked up at 
the restaurant manager as if he had never seen him before. Then he blinked and 
looked around the room that was now empty except for a couple of bored waiters 
standing by the doors to the kitchen.

‘Good Lord, what is the time?’

‘It is a few minutes past four o’clock, sir.’

‘Why on earth did you not warn us?’

‘You and Mrs Cross were enjoying yourselves so much I couldn’t bring myself 
to it, sir.’ Hector left a fifty-pound note on the table for him and took 
Hazel out to where the doorman had the Rover at the front entrance of the club 
with the engine running. When they reached Harley Street, Hector drove down the 
ramp into the underground garage of Alan’s building and helped Hazel into her 
Ferrari.

‘Now, my queen honey bee, remember that I am behind you and it isn’t a 
race. Look in your rear-view mirror occasionally.’

‘Do stop fussing, darling.’

‘I won’t stop until you give me a kiss.’

‘Come and get it, greedy boy.’

While Hector waited for her to leave the garage ahead of him he drew on a pair 
of soft kid leather driving gloves, then he followed the Ferrari up the ramp. 
The motorcyclist following them kept well back, using other vehicles as 
stalking horses as they weaved their way through the streets of London and at 
last joined the M3 motorway. There was no need for him to press too closely and 
run the risk of alerting the quarry. He knew exactly where they were headed. 
Besides that, he had been warned that the man was a hectic dude; definitely not 
somebody to mess around with. He would only make his move much later after they 
had passed through Winchester. At intervals he spoke briefly into the 
hands-free microphone of the phone which was fitted into his crash helmet, 
reporting the progress of the two vehicles ahead of him. Each time the 
receiving station clicked the transmit button to acknowledge the transmission.

Two hundred yards ahead of the motorcyclist Hector drove with one finger 
tapping time to the music on the steering wheel. He was tuned to Magic radio, 
his preferred station. Don McLean was singing ‘American Pie’, and Hector 
sang along. He knew all the intricate lyrics by heart. However, he never 
relaxed his vigilance. Every few seconds his eyes darted up to the rear-view 
mirror, scanning the following traffic. The vehicles in his line of vision were 
constantly changing but each one was saved in his memory. ‘Always watch your 
tail’ was one of his aphorisms. Just before Basingstoke the traffic thinned 
out and Hazel opened up the Ferrari. Hector had to push the Rover up to nearly 
120 mph to keep her in sight.

He called her on his hands-free mobile: ‘Take it easy, lover. Remember you 
have a very important passenger riding with you.’ She blew a loud raspberry 
back at him, but dropped the Ferrari back to just a little over the speed limit.

‘What a good girl you can be when you really try,’ he said and eased his 
speed to match hers.

*

‘Approaching Junction 9. Red vehicle is still leading. She has taken the 
slip-road for Winchester. Black vehicle is tracking her.’ Behind them the 
motorcyclist spoke into his concealed microphone and the receiving station 
clicked acknowledgement again.

Still in loose formation, Hazel led them into the bypass around the ancient 
cathedral city of Winchester, fifteen centuries old and once the capital and 
stronghold of King Alfred the Great. At intervals Hector could make out the 
cathedral spire rising above the other buildings of the city. They left it 
behind. Ahead of Hector the red Ferrari slowed for the turn-off signposted 
Smallbridge on Test and Brandon Hall. As he followed Hazel into the turning 
Hector noticed two workmen on the side of the road. Dressed in yellow 
high-visibility coats with BRITISH ROADS printed across their backs, they were 
unloading the components of a steel barrier from the back of a parked truck. 
Hector paid them little attention, but he looked ahead to where the Ferrari was 
dwindling in the distance. Apart from the red machine the narrow road was 
deserted as far ahead as Hector could see.

Less than a minute later the biker and his passenger followed them into the 
road to Smallbridge. As he passed the workmen the biker raised a gloved hand to 
them and they were galvanized into action by his signal. Quickly they dragged 
the sections of the steel barrier into the road and set it up, blocking both 
lanes. Then they raised a large yellow and black road sign which read, ROAD 
CLOSED. NO ENTRY. DIVERSION.

A large black arrow directed traffic to continue up the main road, effectively 
isolating both Hazel and Hector and the motorcycle that followed them. The 
pseudo workmen jumped back into their truck and drove away. They had been paid 
and their job was done.

So close to home, Hector drove relaxed. Once he glanced up at the rear-view 
mirror and he noticed only a motorbike that was two hundred yards further back. 
He switched his attention to the road ahead. There was rolling green 
countryside on both sides of it, interrupted by copses of darker trees. Some of 
these pressed up close against the road as it twisted and undulated over the 
gentle hillsides. The road had shrunk to two narrow lanes. Even Hazel was 
obliged to reduce her speed.

‘Both vehicles entering demarcated zone,’ said the motorcyclist crisply, 
and this time he was answered by the other station.

‘Roger that, Station One. I have you and the chase both visible.’

Suddenly between the motorcycle and Hector’s Rover another vehicle turned out 
of a muddy farm track onto the tarmac road. It had stayed concealed behind a 
clump of trees until Hector had driven past. It was a large left-hand drive 
Mercedes Benz van with French registration plates. Apart from those, it showed 
no other markings. The motorcyclist accelerated until he was positioned twenty 
feet off the van’s rear bumper.

Ahead of them Hector’s Rover disappeared over another rise. When the Mercedes 
and the motorbike reached the same crest they saw that the road ahead of them 
descended into a shallow valley where it crossed a raised embankment with boggy 
ground on either side. Hector was just driving out onto the embankment while in 
the distance the red Ferrari was already climbing the low hill on the far side 
of the valley. The driver of the Mercedes van smiled with satisfaction. The 
trap was perfectly set. He floored his accelerator, roared down the slope and 
out onto the embankment. As he came up swiftly behind Hector he blew a piercing 
blast on his horn. Hector glanced up at his rear-view mirror.

‘Now where did this cheeky bastard spring from?’ He was startled. The van 
had not been there when he had last checked the mirror.

Nevertheless he judged that, despite the fact that the embankment was so 
narrow, there was just enough room for the two vehicles side by side. 
Instinctively Hector slowed and eased off onto the verge to let the bigger 
vehicle pass. It barged by him with only inches separating them.

Hector was level with the van of the cab for only a fraction of a second. As he 
had expected from the French number plates, it was left-hand drive. The van 
driver looked directly down at him. Hector was startled by the bizarre fact 
that he was wearing a rubber Halloween mask depicting the grinning face of 
President Richard Nixon. His left arm rested on the sill of the van’s open 
side window. It was a muscular arm, with a small design in red tattooed on the 
very dark skin.

Close behind the van, its front wheel almost touching the rear bumper, a black 
Honda Crossrunner motorcycle with two riders crouched on the double seat flew 
past Hector. Both riders wore crash helmets with full-face dark visors and 
complete black leather motorcycle gear.

On the far side of the boggy hollow Hazel’s Ferrari was just topping the 
crest of the hill. Hector realized that they had been neatly cut off from each 
other by the alien van and bike.

‘Hazel!’ Hector shouted her name as all his feral instincts kicked in at 
full force. ‘They are after Hazel!’ He grabbed his mobile phone and punched 
in her number.

A disembodied voice answered the call: ‘The person you have called is 
presently unavailable. Please try again later.’

‘Shit!’ he swore. The reception was always intermittent along this stretch 
of the road. He dropped the phone.

The van and the bike were already pulling rapidly away from him. He rammed the 
accelerator to the floor and roared in pursuit of them. As he stared ahead he 
saw Hazel’s Ferrari disappear over the crest of the rise, so he switched his 
full attention to the vehicles he was pursuing. The engine of his Range Rover 
was new and freshly tuned and he gained rapidly on them. Instinctively he 
thrust his right hand into the front of his jacket to where the Beretta 9mm 
automatic was usually concealed in its armpit holster. Of course, it wasn’t 
there. Carrying handguns is strictly prohibited in Jolly Old England.

‘Bloody politicians!’ he snarled. It was a fleeting thought and his full 
attention never deviated from the menace on the road ahead. He decided he would 
ram the lumbering Mercedes van first. It was the easier target. If he could get 
up alongside he would use the old police tactic of swinging into it at the 
level of its rear wheels. That would spin it off the road. The bike would be 
more elusive, but once the van was taken out of the way he would be able to 
concentrate on running it down.

He was closing rapidly on the van. The Honda swerved out of his way and pulled 
up level with the cab of the van. Now Hector was right on its tail. The van 
driver began to weave from side to side, frustrating Hector’s attempts to 
force his way past.

‘Shit!’ Hector swore as the rear doors of the van swung open above him. 
‘What now?’

He looked up through the open doors into the cargo hold. There was a massive 
builder’s pallet packed with large concrete building blocks wrapped in 
transparent plastic sheeting looming over him. The pallet was mounted on 
rollers. There must have been another thug in the hold pushing it. It trundled 
back towards him. Hector saw what was about to happen, and he hit his brakes 
hard. Even then he was only just quick enough.

The pallet toppled out of the open rear doors of the van. It crashed into the 
roadway directly in front of Hector’s Rover. The plastic wrapper burst on 
impact and tons of the huge blocks cascaded across the narrow road, piling up 
in a barrier that sealed it from verge to verge; an obstacle that would 
challenge even his powerful machine. He just managed to stop with the car’s 
nose almost touching the tumbled wall of blocks. Over the top of the barrier he 
saw that the van had dropped two more pallets further on, sealing off the road 
for fifty yards. Far ahead, the van and the bike were starting up the rise over 
which Hazel’s Ferrari had already disappeared.

He studied the pile of blocks briefly. It was a formidable obstacle; almost 
impossible to scale. Nevertheless, he had to try. He hit the gear lever and 
slammed the Rover into extra low. Then he revved the engine and flew at the 
barrier. He began to climb it torturously, the chassis banging and scraping 
over the jumbled blocks which shifted under the Rover’s weight, denying the 
wheels traction. His speed bled off until he was stranded and high-centred 
halfway up the barrier with three of his wheels spinning futilely in the air 
and the offside front wheel jammed between two of the concrete blocks.

Ahead of him the van and its escort disappeared over the rise. Truly desperate 
by now, Hector slammed the gears into reverse. He gunned the motor again and 
the vehicle rocked and slewed sideways, threatening to topple over and roll 
back down the pile. Gravity took hold at last and it bounced back onto the 
level road, regaining its equilibrium. He opened the door and jumped out onto 
the footboard. He looked about desperately, trying to find a passable way 
around the heap of blocks.

He saw that hard up against the road on each side ran barbed-wire fences, 
obviously to keep livestock off the embankment. Below each fence ran a drainage 
ditch. The mud in the ditches was shiny black and glutinous, but there was no 
other way round.

‘They set this up cunningly. Narrow road, cargo of bricks to block it, bog, 
fence and ditch on each side. Crafty bastards!’ he fumed as he slipped back 
behind the wheel, snapped on his seat belt again and performed a quick 
three-point turn. He lined up the Rover on a section of the fence in which two 
of the wire strands had rusted almost through. He drew a deep breath and 
muttered, ‘Here goes nothing!’ The Rover flew off the verge into the fence. 
The weakened strands of wire snapped like a double whiplash, and he plunged 
through into the ditch beyond. He was flung up against the seat belt so 
violently that he thought his collar bone had broken. He ignored the pain and 
wrestled with the steering wheel that kicked and spun in his grip. Painfully 
the Rover dragged itself out of the muddy ditch, and into the open meadow 
beyond. He turned and ran parallel to the tarmac road. The going was muddy and 
treacherous. Twice he nearly bogged down, but the Rover ploughed on with mud 
and clods of turf thrown high from the spinning wheels. Mud splattered the 
windscreen until he could hardly see through it. He switched on the window 
washer. He passed the piles of concrete blocks on the road above him. He eased 
the Rover back towards the embankment, making no sudden movement of the wheel. 
The Rover increased speed slowly as the ground firmed. He saw that the drainage 
ditch was shallower here. He drove straight into it. The Rover bucked and her 
nose slewed from side to side but she struggled out of the far side of the 
ditch. Here the embankment was lower and its slope gentler. He charged up it 
and hit the fence above it. The barbed wire checked the Rover for a 
heart-stopping moment but then the fence pole snapped and the fence itself was 
flattened. The Rover rolled over it, and lurched onto the paved roadway. Hector 
spun the wheel to point her up the hill and with a grunt of relief raced for 
the crest over which Hazel and her pursuit had disappeared.

*

Hazel was only three miles from the turn-off onto the estate road that led to 
Brandon Hall, and with the same anticipation of a horse smelling its stable she 
quickened her pace. Without realizing it she began to pull away from the 
Mercedes van coming up behind her. She was unaware of its presence. It was her 
habit to use the mirror above her head more for touching up her make-up rather 
than for any other purpose.

The driver in his Richard Nixon mask was at the limit of his speed, but 
abruptly he saw the Ferrari begin to pull away from him. He knew he had to 
catch her before she reached the turn-off onto the Brandon Hall Estate. He 
opened his side window and stuck his upper body out of it. He flashed his 
headlights and waved one arm wildly above his head while with his other hand he 
blew a long blast on his horn. He saw the red brake lights on the Ferrari ahead 
of him glow brightly. Once again the van began to overhaul the sports car, but 
the van driver kept his hand on the horn and his headlights flashing.

Hazel was startled by these antics, until she realized that he was signalling 
her to stop … but why would he do that? Then she saw that the road behind the 
van was empty. There was no sign of Hector’s Range Rover and her face paled 
with shock.

Something terrible has happened to Hector. The van driver is trying to warn me. 
Maybe Hector has crashed. Perhaps he has been hurt or … She could not finish 
the thought, it was too horrible. She hit her brakes hard and swerved onto the 
narrow grass verge. The van raced up behind her, still hooting and flashing its 
headlights. The driver grinned behind his mask as he saw that his ploy had 
worked, and that the woman in the red sports car was confused and alarmed by 
his erratic behaviour. The red car was ideally positioned for his purpose on 
the lip of the ditch. The barbed-wire fence had ended some distance back but 
the drainage ditch still ran beside the road.

At that moment the Range Rover appeared on the crest of the rise behind them. 
Hector took in the scene at a glance.

‘Don’t stop for the bastard!’ he screamed despairingly. ‘Keep going as 
fast as you can, my darling. Don’t stop, for Chrissake!’ He had his foot 
flat on the accelerator and as the Rover felt the downwards slope it spurted 
forward, picking up speed rapidly. But he was still a quarter of a mile back, a 
helpless spectator to the developing tragedy being played out ahead of him.

The Mercedes van never slowed as it came up to the stationary Ferrari, but as 
it drew level the driver spun his steering wheel hard over and broadsided into 
her. There was a clash of steel on steel and a shower of sparks. The lighter 
sports car was flung over the lip into the drainage ditch; the entire 
right-hand side of the bodywork was deeply scored and buckled. It came to rest 
in the bottom of the ditch. It lay on its side with its two nearside wheels 
high in the air. The Mercedes van rocked wildly, swaying and skidding away from 
the impact back towards the opposite verge. The driver skilfully countered its 
gyrations and, as he regained control, opened the throttle and raced away with 
barely any reduction in his speed.

The motorbike had been following the van closely, but now it skidded to a stop 
in the roadway, level with the Ferrari in the ditch. The driver remained 
astride the saddle holding the Honda poised for a getaway, but the passenger 
sprang off the pillion and raced towards the upended Ferrari. The man was quick 
and agile as an ape. He leapt from the lip of the ditch onto the battered 
right-hand side of the sports car and stood poised over the driver’s window, 
balancing there with both arms lifted high above his head. Only then did Hector 
realize that he was wielding a four-pound lump hammer. Even the shatterproof 
glass window could not resist the tremendous blow that he delivered from on 
high. The glass starred and sagged in its frame. The helmeted man lifted the 
hammer and swung again. This time the glass exploded into thousands of 
sparkling chips that showered down over Hazel. She was still in the driver’s 
seat, held by the safety belt around her bloated waist. She threw up her hands 
to protect her face from the flying glass. The man above her hurled the hammer 
aside and in the same movement reached for something in the cargo pocket of his 
leather jacket.

Hector was close enough now to the scene of the crash to see exactly what it 
was he pulled from his pocket. It was a Smith & Wesson pistol chambered in .22 
Long Rifle and fitted with a nine-inch silencer. This was the weapon of choice 
of the Israeli Mossad executioners. With his free hand the gunman raised the 
perspex visor from his face, and he aimed the elongated barrel down through the 
window.

Hazel looked up at him. She saw that he was young and black. Then she realized 
the menace of the pistol pointed at her face and she looked over the barrel 
into her attacker’s eyes. His stare was flat and merciless.

‘No!’ she whispered. ‘Please. I am having a baby. You mustn’t do this. 
My baby…’ She raised her hands to protect her face. The man’s expression 
did not change and he fired. The silenced weapon made almost no sound. It was 
just a soft, almost polite pop. Then the man looked up and saw Hector’s Range 
Rover bearing down on him. There was no time for a second shot, but he was a 
pro, and he knew the first had done the business. He spun round and jumped down 
off the battered bodywork of the Ferrari. As he landed, the Range Rover hit him 
squarely in his back. The sound of the impact was a meaty thump. His body was 
hurled back over the roof of the Rover. Hector never reduced his speed. He 
drove straight on, aiming for the man on the front seat of the Honda.

The biker tried to avoid his rush by dropping his machine hard over and opening 
the hand throttle wide to bring the Honda around in a tight skidding turn. He 
almost succeeded in avoiding the Rover’s charge. But Hector was too quick for 
him. He wrenched the steering sharply and managed to catch the Honda’s 
spinning rear wheel with the point of his front bumper. The bike cartwheeled 
end over end and the rider was thrown from the saddle, under the front wheels 
of the Rover. Both the front and the back wheels of the heavy vehicle bumped 
over his body. In his rear-view mirror Hector saw him lying sprawled in the 
roadway. His crash helmet must have protected him, for he sat up groggily. 
Hector slammed on his brakes and crash changed the Rover into reverse. He shot 
backwards and his victim saw the big vehicle coming back at him and tried to 
get to his feet. Hector hit him again. He went down under the body of the Rover 
and Hector felt him bumping and thumping along under the chassis until he 
rolled out from under the front end and lay face down on the tarmac surface of 
the road. Hector jumped out of the Rover and ran to him. He stooped over him 
and in one quick motion he flicked open the buckle of his helmet, ripped it 
from his head and dropped it aside. Then he placed his knee between the man’s 
shoulder blades to anchor him, pinned the back of his neck with one hand and 
reached around with the other to cup his chin. With one quick wrench he twisted 
his head almost fully around. The vertebrae snapped with a sound like the 
breaking of a stick of dry firewood. There was a spluttering noise from the 
man’s black leather breeches and a sharp fetid stink as his bowels voided. 
Hector snatched up the helmet, crammed it back on his head and buckled it in 
place. Then he carefully opened the visor of the helmet to expose the man’s 
face. The police were going to ask questions. He was not going to blindside 
himself. He did not have to worry about leaving fingerprints; he was still 
wearing his leather gloves. He was desperate to get to Hazel, dreading what had 
happened to her, but he dared not leave a living enemy behind him. He had to 
clear his back. That was one of the vital laws of survival.

The gunman who had fired at Hazel was dragging his paralysed lower body along 
on his elbows. Obviously either his spine or his pelvis had been smashed when 
Hector had knocked him down, but he was still armed. Hector had to make sure of 
him. The hammer lay on the verge of the road where the gunman had thrown it. 
Hector scooped it up on the run. He hefted it as he came up behind the gunman. 
The man had his chin lowered onto his chest so that the helmet on his head was 
cocked forward. The lower part of his neck, just above the level of the C4 
vertebra, was exposed. Accuracy rather than brute force were necessary to 
finish the job. Hector swung the hammer no more than eighteen inches but he 
whipped his wrist into the blow. The force of the steel head on bone jarred his 
grip and he heard the vertebrae break. The gunman’s head dropped forward and 
he lay still. Hector dropped on one knee and flipped the gunman over onto his 
back. His visor was lifted. His eyes were wide open but unfocussed. There was a 
look of mild surprise on his dark Nilotic features. Hector slipped off his 
glove and touched the man’s throat, feeling for the carotid artery. There was 
no pulse. Hector grunted with satisfaction, and pulled on his glove again.

‘No doubt where you come from, laddie. I’ve seen your ilk before,’ he 
said grimly as he glanced at the face of the corpse. He deliberately left the 
helmet visor open. He took a moment longer to place the shaft of the 
sledgehammer in the man’s dead hand and squeeze his fingers closed around it. 
When the police studied the scene they would be unlikely to conclude that he 
had used the hammer to break his own neck.

Waste no more time looking for his pistol. Leave that for the police to find, 
he decided as he jumped to his feet and ran to the overturned Ferrari. He 
scrambled up onto it. He stood over the shattered window and looked down on 
Hazel. She was slumped over the steering wheel. He knelt quickly and reached 
down to cup her head in both his hands. Gently he rolled it back so he was able 
to see her face. With a huge lift of relief he saw that no sign of a bullet 
wound marred her lovely features. Her eyes were open, but they stared ahead 
blankly.

Concussion. He tried to rationalize her lack of reaction. She must have hit her 
head when the car went over. Then he spoke aloud. ‘You are going to be okay, 
my baby. We’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.’ But still he used his 
teeth to pull off one of his gloves, then slipped his bare fingers down under 
her chin and felt for her carotid just to make certain.

‘Thank you, Lord.’ He felt the artery pulsing, softly but steadily under 
his fingers. He had to wriggle the upper half of his own body into the empty 
window frame to reach down to the buckle of her seat belt. He steadied her with 
one arm round her shoulders as he clicked open the buckle, and then with both 
hands under her armpits he lifted her. She was big with the child in her and 
his stance on the body of the wreck was insecure, but he used all his strength 
to lift her dead weight. He growled with the effort, but slowly he brought her 
head out of the window. Her chin was lolling forward on her chest.

‘That’s my girl,’ he gasped. ‘We are nearly there. Hold tight.’ With 
another convulsion of every muscle in his upper body he lifted her high enough 
to get her swollen belly clear of the windowsill. Then he eased her into a 
sitting position and slipped her left arm over his own shoulders to prevent her 
flopping over backwards. He recovered his breath quickly, for he was still in 
very good physical condition despite the soft life he had lived recently. He 
turned his head to kiss her cheek and whisper close to her ear, ‘That’s my 
good brave girl.’ As he shifted his grip on her arm he saw with a jump of his 
own heart that her left hand was bleeding. He stared at it in trepidation until 
he realized that the heavy gold wedding ring on her third finger had been 
beaten or knocked out of shape by some powerful force. The metal had cut into 
her flesh and the blood oozed from the wound.

‘The bullet!’ he breathed. She must have covered her face with her hands as 
that swine aimed at her. The bullet must have hit the ring. It was only a light 
.22 calibre and it had been deflected from her face. He exulted. ‘She’s 
going to live. It’s all going to be all right.’

His strength came flooding back. He swung his legs over the side of the Ferrari 
and once he was in a sitting position he was able to work her legs out of the 
window and swivel her whole body round until he held her on his lap with her 
head cushioned against his shoulder. Then he lowered his feet to the ground and 
ran to the Range Rover, carrying Hazel in his arms like a sleeping child. He 
opened the back door and carefully laid her on the seat. He wedged the 
travelling blanket and the seat cushions around her to prevent her slipping 
onto the floor. He stood back and smiled at her, but it was a thin and 
desperate smile which never reached his eyes.

‘You will never know how much I love you,’ he told her, and was about to 
close the door when he saw something which brought his fear flooding back. A 
thin glistening snake of blood crawled out from under her blonde hairline and 
ran down her cheek, onto her chin and neck.

‘No!’ he blurted. ‘Oh God, no!’ He reached out one hand to her, but he 
was reluctant to touch her and discover the worst. He forced himself to do it, 
and he parted the golden waves of her hair. The bullet hole had been hidden 
beneath them. Hector brought his face close to hers and studied the wound. He 
was a soldier, and he had seen countless bullet wounds. His first estimate of 
the situation was confirmed. The light bullet must have been deflected by the 
heavy gold ring, but it had also been tumbled. The deflection had not been 
sufficient to leave Hazel untouched. The bullet had hit her high in the front 
of the skull. The entry wound was not a neat circular puncture but an elongated 
tear in her scalp. The bullet had rolled in flight and hit her sideways on.

Gently he ran his fingers back through her hair, examining her scalp. There was 
no sign of any exit wound. The bullet was still inside her skull; inside her 
brain.

He closed his eyes tightly. Yes, he was a soldier and he had seen many good men 
go down. But not this, never the one woman he had ever truly loved. He had 
thought he was tough and he had thought he could take it. But he discovered now 
he was not and he couldn’t. His soul quailed. His universe reeled. He braced 
himself. It took an enormous physical effort, but he spoke aloud to himself. 
‘You stupid bastard! Standing here moping while her life bleeds away. Move! 
Damn you, move!’

He closed the door and ran round to the driver’s side. He clambered into the 
seat. The engine had stalled. He started it again. His mind was racing now. The 
nearest general hospital was the Royal Hampshire in Winchester. The road behind 
him was blocked and impassable. He calculated the quickest alternative route to 
reach it. It would put an extra eight miles on the journey.

Nothing else for it, he told himself grimly and gunned the Rover. He drove 
fast, very fast. He took chances passing other vehicles in dangerous 
situations. This was nearly his downfall, but also his ultimate salvation. He 
shot past a heavily laden lorry that was lumbering up a blind rise. In doing so 
he avoided by mere inches a head-on collision with an oncoming police car. The 
driver made an immediate U-turn and came after him with the siren blaring. 
Hector saw in the rear-view mirror the vivid blue and yellow reflective 
markings of the vehicle, and the peaked cap of the police driver chasing him.

‘Thank you, God!’ he breathed and pulled over immediately. The police car 
parked in front of him and two uniformed officers jumped out and came back to 
him with grim expressions. Hector lowered his window and stuck his head out. 
Before either of the traffic officers could speak he shouted at them.

‘My wife has been shot in the head. She is dying. You must give me an escort 
to Winchester Hospital A & E.’ They both paused with their grim expressions 
changing to consternation. ‘Here! Take a look. She is on the back seat,’ 
Hector insisted. The man with sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve ran to the 
rear window and peered in.

‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘There is blood all over the place.’ He straightened 
up and looked at Hector. ‘Okay! Follow me, sir.’

‘Let your mate ride in the back with my wife. He can cushion her head from 
being thrown about.’

‘Peter, you heard the man,’ the sergeant snapped, and the younger man 
scrambled into the back seat of the Rover.

Gently Hector helped him settle Hazel’s head onto his lap. Then he shouted to 
the sergeant, ‘All set. Let’s go.’ The patrol car raced away with its 
siren howling and Hector’s Range Rover close on its tail.

There was an ambulance parked outside the main doors to the emergency room at 
the hospital, but the sergeant gave it a blast with the siren and it moved off 
the stand hurriedly as Hector drove up. The sergeant jumped out and ran into 
the building. He came back almost at once leading a white-coated orderly 
pushing a theatre trolley. Hector helped the orderly lift Hazel’s limp body 
onto the trolley and cover her with a sheet.

‘Go with your wife, sir,’ the sergeant told him. ‘I’ll wait here to 
take your statement later. You will have to tell us how this happened.’

‘Thank you, officer.’ Hector turned and followed the trolley into the 
entrance. A young female doctor accosted him.

‘What happened to this lady?’

‘She was shot in the head. There is a bullet in her brain.’

‘Take the patient to X-ray,’ the doctor snapped at the orderly. ‘Tell 
them, I want front and side plates of the head.’ Then she glanced at Hector. 
‘Are you related to the patient?’

‘She is my wife.’

‘You’re in the best place, sir. The consulting neurosurgeon from London is 
here today. I will ask him to come to examine your wife as soon as he can.’

‘Can I stay with her?’

‘I am afraid I have to ask you to wait until she has been to X-ray and until 
the neurosurgeon has examined her.’

‘I understand,’ Hector said. ‘You will be able to find me outside with 
the police. They want to take a statement from me.’

Hector spent the next half-hour with the police sergeant sitting in the front 
seat of the police car. The officer’s name was Evan Evans. Hector gave him 
directions to the scene, and a brief description of the nature of the attack.

‘I was trying to defend my wife from the assailants,’ Hector explained, but 
he was careful not to give too many details. As far as the law was concerned he 
had committed a double murder. He had to have time to think his cover story 
through. ‘I drove my Range Rover into their motorcycle and I think both the 
riders were injured. I did not have time to attend to them. I was most anxious 
to get my wife under proper medical care.’

‘I can understand that, sir. I will phone my headquarters immediately and 
have them send a vehicle to the scene. I am afraid they will have to impound 
your wife’s car for a full forensic examination.’ Hector nodded his 
understanding, and the sergeant went on, ‘I know you will want to be with 
your wife now, but we shall require a full written and signed statement from 
you as soon as possible.’

‘You have my home address and my mobile phone number.’ Hector opened the 
car door. ‘I will be available any time you need me. Thank you, Sergeant 
Evans. When my wife recovers, a great deal of the credit for that will go to 
you.’

As he walked back into the hospital the young doctor hurried to meet him.

‘Mr Cross, the neurosurgeon has examined your wife and her X-ray plates. He 
would like to speak to you. He is still with Mrs Cross. Come with me, please.’

The neurosurgeon was in a screened examination cubicle bending over Hazel’s 
supine figure, which was still on the trolley. He straightened up as Hector 
entered the cubicle and came to meet him. He was a handsome middle-aged man. He 
had the self-assured air of one both intelligent and highly competent; a master 
of his craft.

‘I am Trevor Irving, Mr…?’

‘Cross. Hector Cross. How is my wife, Mr Irving?’ Hector cut across the 
pleasantries.

‘The bullet has not exited.’ Irving was just as business-like. ‘It’s 
lying in an extremely delicate position, and there is bleeding. It must be 
removed, and at once.’ He pointed to the backlit X-ray plate on the scanner 
beside Hazel’s bed. The dark shadow of the tiny round-nosed projectile stood 
out boldly against the soft billows of brain tissue that surrounded it.

‘I understand.’ Hector averted his eyes. He didn’t want to look at that 
terrible harbinger of her death.

‘There is a complication in that your wife is pregnant. How far along is 
she?’

‘Forty weeks. She was examined by her gynaecologist this morning.’

‘I thought it might be that far advanced,’ Irving said. ‘The foetus will 
be dangerously distressed by the mother’s surgery. If we lose her, we might 
lose her child with her.’

‘You have to save my wife at all costs. She is the one who bloody counts.’ 
Hector’s tone was savage. Irving blinked.

‘They both bloody count, Mr Cross. And don’t you bloody forget that.’ His 
tone matched Hector’s.

‘I apologize unreservedly, Mr Irving. Of course I did not mean that. My only 
excuse is that I am distraught.’

Irving recognized in Hector Cross a man who did not back down easily. ‘I am 
going to do my utmost to save both of them, mother and child. However, we will 
need your permission for Doctor Naidoo here to immediately remove the child by 
Caesarean section using a spinal block anaesthetic. Only then can I proceed to 
remove the bullet.’

He turned to the other physician in the cubicle, who came forward to shake 
Hector’s hand. He was a young Indian man but there was almost no trace of an 
accent as he said, ‘The baby is still in very good condition. Caesarean 
section is a very simple procedure. There is almost no danger involved and 
neither your wife nor your child will be traumatized.’

‘All right, then. Do it. I’ll sign any piece of paper you need,’ Hector 
said. He felt as cold as his voice sounded in his own ears.

*

A nurse conducted Hector to a hospital waiting room. There were half a dozen 
other people there before him. They all looked up expectantly as Hector 
entered, but then slumped with disappointment and resignation. Hector helped 
himself to a cup of coffee from the communal urn. He saw his hands were shaking 
and the cup chattered against the saucer. With an effort he controlled them, 
and found a seat in a corner of the large room.

He was accustomed to being in complete command of any situation, but now he 
felt helpless. There was nothing for him to do but wait. And not allow despair 
to overtake him.

He had not had a chance to think things through since the dreadful moment that 
the Mercedes van with the masked driver had roared past him on the narrow road. 
From that moment he had been driven only by adrenalin and the instincts of 
survival towards himself and his loved ones, Hazel and the infant. This was his 
first chance to evaluate the situation soberly and calmly.

One thing was certain; he was in a war to the knife. He had to shore up his 
mental defences and prepare for the next assault from a faceless and hidden 
enemy. He could only guess whence it would come. All he was really certain of 
was that it would come.

However, his mind was still playing tricks with him. His despair returned in 
full force; this feeling of confusion and uncertainty, this overpowering sense 
of dread. All he was able to concentrate on was the picture in his mind of the 
trickle of blood running down Hazel’s face and the nothingness in her staring 
eyes.

He took a gulp from the coffee mug and pressed the fingers of his free hand 
into his eye sockets until it hurt; trying to rally his resources. It took a 
while, but at last he had himself under control.

‘Okay. So what have we learned about the nature of the beast?’ he asked 
himself. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit and found his small 
moleskin notebook. ‘The van was almost certainly stolen, but I have the 
registration number.’ He scribbled it down. ‘Next, the driver of the 
Mercedes. Very little there. Face covered by the mask.’ He replayed the brief 
sighting in his mind and scanned it for details. ‘Blue denim work shirt, 
probably fifteen quid at Primark.’ He paused for a moment, and then went on. 
‘Left arm bare. Very dark skin. Good muscle tone. Young and fit.’ He wrote 
it down in his own personal shorthand. ‘Impression of a wristwatch on his 
skin, but no watch. Careful bastard, then. Stripping for action. Red tattoo on 
back of the hand. Heart? Scorpion? Coiled snake? Not sure.’ He paused. 
‘Nothing else there. What about the two dearly departed? Police forensics 
will check their fingerprints and will milk every other detail from their 
cadavers. Though there is little doubt about their tribal origins. I had a good 
look at them both, post culling. Those Nilotic features are unmistakable. Thin 
nose and lips. Prominent front teeth. High cheekbones. Handsome. Tall, lean 
bodies. Almost certainly Somalis.’ Then he smiled grimly at his own naïvety. 
‘Or Maasai, or Ethiopian, or Samburu or any one of the other Nilotic tribes. 
But Somali still makes the most sense to me. The dynasty of Tippoo Tip, the 
great warlord. They were the original Beast. They were the ones who hijacked 
Hazel’s yacht; who kidnapped Cayla; who hacked off her head and sent it to us 
in a bottle. This is very much their style. I thought that I had culled most of 
that clan. I thought that I had got them all, but a nest of scorpions breeds up 
again quickly. Could easily be that some of them escaped us to carry on the 
blood feud.’

Hector had often tried to fathom the tradition of these honour killings. The 
blood feud was one of the concepts of Sharia law most alien to the Western 
mind. The aim of the blood feud was neither punishment nor retribution. If it 
were, then the killing would be of the original perpetrator of the crime, and 
once that had been achieved the matter would come to an end. It is rather the 
cleansing of the family honour by the slaying of any member of the offender’s 
family. Of course, the spilled blood of that victim cries out to the opposite 
family for purification. Circle without end.

Hector sighed. ‘Time to call up some help here.’ He did not have to ponder 
that question. There was only one answer: Paddy O’Quinn. Good old Paddy and 
his merry men.

When Hector and Hazel had first met, Hector had been the owner and operator of 
Cross Bow Security. Cross Bow’s only client was Bannock Oil, the enormous oil 
conglomerate that Hazel still headed as CEO. Once the two of them had united, 
Hazel had wanted Hector close to her at all times. She had persuaded him to 
take up a position on the board of directors of Bannock Oil, and to sell all 
his holdings in Cross Bow to Bannock Oil so that he would be free to join her. 
The price Bannock Oil paid to buy Hector out was substantial but completely 
fair. It was a sum sufficient to make him financially independent and the 
master of his own destiny. This was Hazel’s way of ensuring that Hector was a 
free man, and that they could always be equal partners in their marriage. She 
did not want him to be subservient to her by reason of her own vast wealth. She 
knew he was an alpha male and would not, could not, have tolerated any other 
arrangement for long. It was a gesture so typical of her.

‘Smart as new paint and twice as beautiful!’ His mood lightened for a 
moment as he thought of her, but almost immediately the dark clouds closed over 
him again.

Paddy O’Quinn had been Hector’s second in command at Cross Bow. He had 
helped Hector build up the company from the earliest days. There was no man 
Hector trusted more. He was solid as a mountain, he was savvy and quick, but 
over all his other virtues he had the fighting man’s instinct for danger 
almost as strongly as did Hector himself. Hector took comfort in the fact that 
Paddy was only a phone call away.

His reverie was interrupted by a hospital nurse who entered the waiting room 
and called out his name. He jumped to his feet.

‘I am Hector Cross.’

‘Please come with me, Mr Cross.’ As he hurried after her, Hector glanced at 
his wristwatch. He had been waiting a little over an hour and a half. He caught 
up with the nurse in the passage.

‘Is everything all right?’ he demanded to know.

‘Yes indeed.’ She smiled at him.

‘My wife?’

‘She is in theatre. Mr Irving is still operating on her. But I have somebody 
else for you to meet.’ She led him through a labyrinth of passages to a door 
marked Maternity Observation Room.

When they entered, Hector found that there were chairs arranged along one wall 
facing a large glass panel that looked into a room beyond. The nurse spoke into 
a microphone on the table below the window.

‘Hi there, Bonnie! Mr Cross is here.’

To which a disembodied voice replied, ‘Be with you in a sec.’

Hector stood close to the window and minutes later another nurse, in the 
uniform of a ward sister, entered the observation room on the far side of the 
glass. She was possibly thirty years of age; young to carry such high rank, 
Hector thought. She was plump and pretty with a round, jovial face. She carried 
in her arms a small bundle wrapped in a blue blanket which was embroidered with 
the initials RHCH in red, Royal Hampshire County Hospital. She came to the 
opposite side of the window and gave Hector a beaming pink smile. It was 
contagious and Hector smiled back at her, although it was not indicative of his 
true feelings.

‘Hello, Mr Cross. My name is Bonnie. May I have the pleasure of introducing 
you to somebody?’ She opened the blankets to reveal a ruddy and wrinkled 
little face with tightly closed slits for eyes. ‘Say hello to your 
daughter.’

‘Good God! She’s got no hair.’ Hector came out with the first thing that 
sprang to mind, and immediately realized how inane it sounded, even to him.

‘She’s very beautiful!’ said the nurse sternly.

‘In a funny sort of way, I suppose she is.’

‘In every possible way she is,’ she corrected him. ‘She weighs exactly 
six pounds. Isn’t she a clever girl? What are you going to call her?’

‘Catherine Cayla. Her mother chose those names.’ Surely he should feel more 
than this when he looked at his firstborn child, but instead he thought of 
Hazel lying somewhere nearby with a bullet in her brain. He was on the verge of 
tears and he coughed and blinked them back. The last time he had cried openly 
was at the age of six when his pony had thrown him and he had broken his arm in 
three places on landing.

Catherine Cayla opened her mouth in a wide yawn which exposed her toothless 
gums. Hector smiled and this time the smile was genuine. He felt a small flame 
flare in his heart.

‘She is beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘She’s bloody gorgeous. Just like 
her mother.’

‘Oh! Look at the little darling,’ said Bonnie. ‘She’s already hungry. I 
am going to take her for her first feed. Say bye-bye, Daddy.’

‘Bye-bye,’ said Hector dutifully. No one had ever called him Daddy before. 
He watched the nurse carry his daughter away. For a short while that tiny soul 
had shone for him like a candle in the darkness of a winter’s night. Now she 
was gone the arctic cold of despair descended upon him once more. He turned 
away from the window and went back to the main waiting room.

He sat hunched in a corner chair. The darkness broke over him in waves. He 
searched his soul for the courage to endure it, and found instead anger.

Anger is a better cure than resignation. He squared his shoulders, and stood up 
straight. He left the waiting room and went out into the passage. He found the 
men’s toilet and locked himself in a cubicle and sat on the seat. He took his 
mobile phone from the leather pouch on his belt. Paddy O’Quinn’s number was 
in his contact list.

The phone rang three times and then Paddy said, ‘O’Quinn.’

‘Paddy. Where are you?’ Hector spoke into the mouthpiece. His tone was 
crisp and sharp again.

‘Sweet Jesus! I thought you had dropped off the end of the world, Hector.’ 
They had not spoken to each other in months.

‘They got Hazel.’

Paddy was stunned into silence. Hector could hear him breathing hoarsely. Then 
he said, ‘Who? How?’ His voice rang like a sabre being drawn from its 
scabbard.

‘Four hours ago we ran into an ambush. It’s bad. Hazel took a .22 calibre 
bullet in her brain. She’s in theatre now. The medico is going for the 
bullet. We don’t know yet if she’s going to make it.’

‘She’s a great lady, Heck. You know how I feel.’

‘I know, Paddy.’ They were warriors, they didn’t wail and bleat.

‘She was pregnant, wasn’t she? What about her baby?’ Paddy growled.

‘They saved her. We have a girl. She seems to be doing well.’

‘Thank God for that, at least.’ Paddy paused and then he asked, ‘Do you 
have any leads?’

‘I cancelled two of the bastards. They were Somalis, I think.’

‘It has to be the Beast again!’ Paddy said. ‘I thought we had got all of 
them.’

‘That’s what I thought. We were wrong.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ Paddy asked.

‘Find them for me, Paddy. Some of the Tippoo Tip brood must have survived. 
Find them.’

Hector had built up Cross Bow Security into a formidable operation on the 
principle that offence was more effective than defence and that good 
intelligence was the most powerful offensive asset. When Paddy took over from 
him he had built on those precepts. As one of the directors of Bannock Oil, 
Hector still had access to the accounts of Cross Bow. He knew just how much 
Paddy was spending on his intelligence arm. If it had been good before, now it 
had to be that much better. Hector went on speaking.

‘Is Tariq Hakam still with you?’

‘He is one of my main men.’

‘Send him back into Puntland to search for any survivors of the family of 
Hadji Sheikh Mohammed Khan Tippoo Tip. Nobody knows that terrain better than 
Tariq. He was born there.’

‘After what we did to them in Puntland, any of them that got away are almost 
certainly dispersed across the Middle East.’

‘Wherever they are, just find them. Tariq must draw up a list of every male 
descendant of Khan Tippoo Tip over the age of fifteen years. Then we will hunt 
them down; every last one of them.’

‘I hear you, Heck. In the meantime I’ll be pulling for Hazel. If anybody 
can make it, she is the one. All my money is on her.’

‘Thanks, Paddy.’ Hector broke the contact and went back to the waiting room.

*

An hour dragged by like a cripple, and then another passed even more painfully 
before a theatre sister came for him. She wore a plastic cap over her hair. A 
surgical mask dangled around her neck and she had theatre slippers on her feet.

‘How is my wife?’ Hector demanded as he sprang to his feet.

‘Mr Irving will answer all your questions,’ she told him. ‘Please, follow 
me.’

She led him to one of the post-operative recovery rooms adjoining the operating 
theatres. The sister opened the door and stood aside for him to enter. Hector 
found himself in a room with green painted walls. Against the far wall was a 
single hospital bed. Beside it a heart-monitoring machine stood on its trolley 
and peeped softly. Across its electronic screen bounced the glowing green 
electronic point of light keeping time to the heartbeats of the patient on the 
bed below. It left a vivid green sawtooth trail across the screen. In the few 
seconds that Hector stood in the doorway he realized the trail was not regular. 
A rapid series of heartbeats was followed by a distinct pause, then an almost 
hesitant beat, another pause and then three or four rapid beats.

Irving was leaning over the patient on the bed, screening the supine body. He 
stood aside as he sensed Hector behind him, enabling Hector to see Hazel’s 
face.

Her head was bound up in a tight turban of white bandages, which extended under 
her chin and covered her ears. The lower half of her body was covered with a 
sheet. She still wore the green theatre gown. There were IV needles in the 
veins of her arms and the backs of both her hands. Plastic tubes dangled down 
from the sacs of liquid that were suspended above her on a moveable stand.

Irving came to meet Hector.

‘How is she?’ Hector managed to keep his voice level. Irving hesitated. The 
heart monitor beeped twice before he replied.

‘I have removed the bullet. But there was more soft tissue damage than we 
anticipated. It did not show up on the X-ray plates.’

Hector walked slowly to the side of the bed and looked down at her. Her face 
was white as pastry. Her eyes were slightly open. Only the whites showed 
between her long curling lashes. There was a tube up her left nostril connected 
to the oxygen machine standing on the floor. Her breathing was so light that he 
had to bring his face down an inch from hers to catch it. He kissed her lips 
with a butterfly touch. He straightened up and looked at Irving.

‘What are her chances?’ he asked. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

Again Irving hesitated, and then he shrugged almost imperceptibly.

‘Fifty–fifty, or perhaps a little less.’

‘If she does recover, will she regain full brain function?’

Irving frowned before replying. Then he said, ‘That is unlikely.’

‘Thank you for your honesty,’ Hector said. ‘May I wait here with her?’

‘Of course. That chair is for you.’ He indicated a seat on the other side 
of the bed. ‘I have done all I can, now I must hand your wife over to Mr 
Daly, the hospital’s resident neurosurgical specialist. He has already seen 
her. His room is just down the corridor. He can be here in a few seconds if 
Sister Palmer here summons him.’ He nodded at the theatre sister who was 
adjusting the taps on Hazel’s IV drips.

‘Goodbye, Mr Cross. God bless you and your lovely wife.’

‘Goodbye and thank you, Mr Irving. I know that nobody could have done more 
for her.’

When he was gone, Hector spoke to Sister Palmer.

‘I am her husband.’

‘I know. Sit down, Mr Cross. We may have a long wait.’ Hector moved the 
chair closer to the bed and sat.

‘May I hold her hand?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but please be careful not to disturb any of the IV tubes.’ Hector 
reached out gingerly and took three of Hazel’s fingers. They were very cold, 
but not as cold as his heart. He studied her face. Her eyelids were almost 
closed. The eyes themselves were rolled back in their sockets. He could not see 
their pupils. Only a sliver of iris was visible. They had lost their 
sapphire-blue lustre. They were dull and lifeless. He moved his chair again so 
that when she opened her eyes he would be sitting directly in her line of 
sight. He would be the first thing she saw when she regained consciousness; he 
carefully prevented himself from even thinking the conjunction ‘If’.

He listened to the irregular peep of the heart monitor and every once in a 
while he glanced at the rise and fall of the bellows of the oxygen apparatus. 
The only other sounds were the tap of Sister Palmer’s heels on the floor 
tiles and the rustle of her skirts as she moved around the room. He glanced 
down at his wristwatch. It was his gift from Hazel on his last birthday. It was 
the platinum model with the Rolex signature blue dial. The time was twenty 
minutes to two in the morning. He had been awake since sunrise. His chin 
dropped onto his chest and, still holding her hand, he dozed just below the 
level of consciousness, but any change in the rhythm of the heart monitor 
brought him back again with a jerk.

He dreamed that he and Hazel were climbing the hill on the Colorado ranch. Hand 
in hand they were following the path through the forest that led to Henry 
Bannock’s mausoleum. Cayla was running ahead of them.

‘I want to see Daddy!’ She was laughing, looking back over her shoulder. 
The likeness of daughter to mother was astounding.

‘Wait for me!’ Hazel called after her. ‘I am going with you.’ Dread 
overwhelmed Hector. He hardened his grip on her hand.

‘No!’ he said. ‘Stay with me. You mustn’t leave me. You must never 
leave me.’ Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard another voice 
speaking.

‘Mr Cross, are you all right?’ He opened his eyes and Sister Palmer was 
standing over him. Her expression was concerned. ‘You were shouting in your 
sleep.’ It took a few moments for Hector to gather his wits. Then he knew 
where he was. He looked into Hazel’s face. She had not changed the position 
of her head, but her eyes were open. The lustre of cerulean blue glowed in them 
again. She was seeing him.

‘Hazel!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Squeeze my hand!’ There was no 
reaction. Her fingers were limp and cold. He passed his left hand across her 
face. Her eyes did not move. They stared out at him.

‘It’s Hector,’ he whispered. ‘I love you. I thought I had lost you.’ 
He stared into her eyes and thought that he saw her pupils contract minimally; 
or perhaps it was merely vain hope that engendered the thought. Then he heard 
the beat of the heart monitor. It was rapid and regular.

‘She can see me,’ he said. ‘She can hear me.’ His voice was rising.

‘Calm yourself, Mr Cross,’ Sister Palmer said. ‘We must not race ahead of 
ourselves. The cerebral damage…’ He did not want to hear her say it.

‘I tell you she can see me and hear me.’ He reached out and touched 
Hazel’s pale cold cheek. He felt his courage and determination rushing back.

‘Sister Palmer,’ he said crisply. ‘Please go down to Maternity and tell 
the duty nurse to bring my daughter here.’

‘We can’t do that, sir. Your wife is very ill and—’

‘Sister, do you have children of your own?’ He cut her short.

She hesitated, then her voice and tone changed. ‘I have a son of six.’

‘So you can imagine what it would have meant to die without ever laying eyes 
on him?’

‘There are rules,’ she said weakly. ‘Babies born by Caesarean section 
must remain in the unit for—’

‘I don’t give a good stuff for the rules. My wife may die. Go down to 
Maternity and bring her daughter to her. Do it now!’

Sister Palmer hesitated a moment longer then she whispered, ‘At this time of 
night there will be very few people around.’ She straightened her back and 
turned to the door. She closed it quietly behind her as she went out into the 
passage.

Hector brought his lips close to Hazel’s ear and whispered to her, ‘You 
were right, Hazel my darling! Our baby is a girl. Her name is Catherine Cayla, 
just the way you planned it.’ He stared into her eyes, searching for signs of 
life. It was like looking into two fathomless blue pools. ‘They are going to 
bring Catherine to you. You will see how beautiful she is. Her hair is going to 
be golden just like her big sister’s. She weighs six pounds.’ He stroked 
her cheek softly as he whispered encouragement and endearments.

The heart monitor beeped to a steady beat. The sawtooth pattern across the 
screen was regular and even.

It seemed to Hector like an age of waiting, and then the door behind him opened 
and Sister Palmer entered. She was smiling. Close behind her came Bonnie, the 
maternity nurse. Hector was surprised to see her still on duty. In her arms she 
carried the blue-blanketed bundle. Hector leapt to his feet and went to her. 
Without a word, the nurse offered the bundle to him.

Hector reached out uncertainly, and then took a step back and muttered, 
‘Which end must I take? I don’t want to drop her.’

‘Make an arm for her,’ Bonnie ordered, and when he obeyed she laid 
Catherine in the resulting cradle. Hector looked as apprehensive as if he was 
holding a ticking bomb.

‘I have never done this before.’

‘She won’t break,’ Bonnie reassured him. ‘Babies are pretty tough 
little customers. Hold her as though you love her.’

Slowly Hector began to relax. He smiled. ‘She smells good.’ His smile 
turned into a wide grin. ‘She’s so warm and soft.’

‘Yep!’ Bonnie said. ‘That’s the way babies are.’

Hector turned back to the bed, still holding the infant. He leaned over Hazel 
until he could bring Catherine’s face down level with hers.

‘Just look at her! Isn’t she the most magical little thing?’ he murmured.

Nothing moved in Hazel’s face, her expression was impassive and her eyes 
expressionless. He brought their two faces closer together.

‘I think your daughter needs a kiss, Mrs Cross,’ he said, and touched 
Catherine’s lips to those of Hazel. Immediately the infant’s lips started 
making suckling motions, instinctively seeking the teat. She began to move her 
head from side to side, brushing against her mother’s face. Still Hazel’s 
face was stony and pale as chalk.

When Catherine was unable to find what she was looking for she squawked. Almost 
at once her frustration turned to anger and she let out a series of grunts and 
muted bellows; the most evocative sounds to any mother’s ears. But Hazel’s 
features remained blank.

Crestfallen, Hector lifted Catherine back into the cradle of his arms. He had 
hoped for something, for anything. Just a sign that she had known this was her 
own child nuzzling her cheek.

Then a small miracle was enacted before him. A tear welled up from the blue 
depths of Hazel’s left eye. It was the size of a seed pearl, and it shone 
with the same opalescence.

‘She is weeping,’ Hector said in a small, awed voice. ‘She sees. She 
knows. She understands.’

Bonnie took the child from him. ‘We must go now. I dare not stay any longer. 
It’s more than my job is worth.’ She went quickly to the door and from 
there looked back at him with a smile. ‘It was a hell of a risk, but I’m 
glad I took it.’

‘So am I.’ Hector’s voice was gruff. ‘I owe you one,’ he said to 
Bonnie. ‘I owe you a very big one.’ Then she and Catherine were gone.

Hector looked at Sister Palmer. ‘You too, a very big one!’ he told her.

Hector went back to his station beside the bed. He took Hazel’s fingers and 
tried to rub some warmth into them. He whispered to her a little longer, and 
then weariness and emotional burnout overtook him again and sleep dropped over 
him like a dark fog.

*

Something woke him. He was not certain what it was. He looked around him 
groggily. Then two things registered with him in quick succession: the sound of 
the beeper was wildly erratic and the trace on the screen of the heart monitor 
was dancing and skipping chaotically. In panic he came to his feet and stood 
over Hazel. Her chest was heaving and a rasping sound came from her open mouth.

‘Hazel,’ he said with rising anger. ‘Fight, my darling. Fight the 
bastard.’ He knew the black angel had come for her. ‘Don’t let him take 
you!’

Sister Palmer hurried in, alerted by the tone of his voice. She went to the far 
side of the bed, took one long look and said, ‘I will call the duty 
doctor.’ She rushed from the room. Hector did not watch her go. He was 
shaking Hazel’s hand.

‘Listen to me!’ he pleaded with her. ‘Stay with us. We need you. 
Catherine and I need you. Don’t go! Please don’t go with him.’

The wild cacophony of the heart monitor slowed. The peaks of the pattern on the 
screen drew further apart.

‘Fight with that great heart of yours, Hazel. Don’t give in,’ he told 
her, and the tears streamed down his face. He had seen this happen so often on 
the battlefield but he had never wept before. ‘Think of us. You never give 
in. Fight him off with your warrior’s heart.’

Hazel expelled the air from her lungs in a long and whispering sigh. Then she 
breathed no more. The monitor beeped one last time and then went silent. The 
trace levelled out into a flat green line at the bottom of the screen.

Hector stood over her and his tears dropped onto her face as he seized her 
shoulders and shook her.

‘Come back!’ he cried. ‘I won’t let you go!’

The door opened behind him and the young duty doctor strode up behind him and 
took his arm, leading him away from the bed.

‘Please, Mr Cross. Stand back and let me do my job.’ The doctor worked 
quickly. He placed his stethoscope on her chest, listened a few seconds and 
frowned. Then he felt for a pulse at her wrist and said softly, ‘I am sorry, 
Mr Cross.’

Gently, he passed his hand over Hazel’s face, closing her staring blue eyes. 
Then he reached down for the bed sheet and drew it up to cover her face.

‘No!’ Hector caught his wrist. ‘Don’t cover her. I want to remember her 
face for ever. Please leave us alone for a while.’ He looked at Sister Palmer 
who was hovering at the foot of the bed. ‘You too, Sister. There is nothing 
more you can do here.’ The two of them left quietly.

Hector knelt beside the bed. He had not prayed in a long while but he prayed 
now. Then he stood up and wiped his eyes.

‘This is not goodbye, Hazel. Wherever you have gone, wait for me. One day we 
will be together again. Wait for me, my darling.’ He kissed her on the mouth. 
Her lips were already cooling. He drew the sheet over her face and went to the 
door.

*

On the way to the exit he stopped at the maternity wards and knocked on the 
door of the nurses’ room. A sister appeared. ‘May I help you, Mr Cross?’ 
Hector was mildly surprised that she knew his name. He had no idea of the 
flutter he had created in the staff room. The word had spread.

‘I am looking for a nurse called Bonnie.’

‘Bonnie Hepworth? She went off duty an hour ago.’

‘What time will she come on again?’

‘Six o’clock this evening.’

‘Thank you. May I see my daughter now? She was born last night.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She glanced at her clipboard and found the name. 
‘Catherine. Okay. Let’s go to the observation room.’

When they arrived, Hector pressed close against the glass. ‘She looks more 
human than a few hours ago.’ The nurse looked disapproving. He had learned 
that they didn’t like derogatory remarks about their babies, and hurried on. 
‘When will she be discharged?’

‘Well…’ The sister looked doubtful. ‘She is a Caesarean and her 
mother…’

‘When can I come and fetch her?’ Hector insisted.

‘Probably three or four days if all goes well, but of course it’s up to 
Doctor Naidoo.’

‘I’ll be back this evening to visit her,’ he promised.

He went out to where the Range Rover stood in the car park. He walked around it 
to check the damage. It was filthy with dried mud and the front offside bumper 
was buckled. He climbed in and started the engine, and then drove back towards 
Brandon Hall.

He was on the direct road from Winchester, which took him past the scene of the 
ambush. Police Crime Scene tape cordoned off the area, but Hazel’s Ferrari 
had been towed away. Three police officers were still taking measurements and 
working the site for further evidence.

Hector slowed for the road block, but one of the officers waved him through.

Reynolds, the butler, opened the door for him. ‘It’s very good to see you, 
sir. We were very worried when you and Mrs Cross did not return yesterday 
evening. Mrs Cross is not with you?’ He looked over Hector’s shoulder. 
Hector ignored the question.

‘Please have Mary bring a pot of coffee up to my study. Then this afternoon 
at two o’clock I want the entire staff assembled in the blue drawing room.’

Hector went upstairs. He set out his shaving kit, but then on an impulse 
decided to let his beard grow as a tribute of mourning for Hazel. Instead he 
showered and went through to his dressing room in a bathrobe. Mary brought the 
coffee tray.

‘Have you and Mrs Cross had breakfast, sir?’

‘Don’t worry about breakfast. Did Mr Reynolds tell you about the staff 
meeting?’

‘Yes, he did, sir.’

Hector dressed in casual country cords and brogues and went to his study at the 
end of the passage. He sat at his desk and reached for the phone. Paddy 
answered on the fourth ring.

‘Paddy, it’s a crying bastard to have to tell you this. Hazel didn’t make 
it. She died at five o’clock this morning.’

There was an echoing silence as Paddy weighed his reply, then he said hoarsely, 
‘My condolences, Heck. We are going to get the sons of bitches that did this. 
You have my oath on that. What about the funeral? Nastiya and I would want to 
be there.’

Nastiya was Paddy’s KGB-trained wife, a magnificent Russian blonde who had 
doubled for Hazel in the Trojan Horse operation that had wiped the pirate 
stronghold in Somalia from the face of the earth.

‘Private cremation. No fuss. That’s what she always wanted. However, if you 
can get here, Hazel would have wanted you two, of all people, to be there. 
Where are you?’

‘Abu Zara.’

‘The cremation won’t take place for a while. The police will want a 
forensic autopsy. But come anyway as soon as you can. We need to talk. Make 
some plans.’

‘What about your baby, Heck? Did the poor little mite make it?’

‘She was delivered by Caesarean before Hazel…’ Hector checked. He 
didn’t want to say the word. It was too final. He hurried on. ‘Her name is 
Catherine. She’s gorgeous.’

‘Takes after Hazel, then. Not you.’ Hector’s laugh was more like a croak, 
and Paddy went on. ‘We’ll have to hide her, Heck. If the Beast finds out 
about her they’ll come back for the both of you.’

‘That’s something that has been worrying me, Paddy. They were not after me. 
They were targeting Hazel only.’

‘Tell me,’ Paddy encouraged him.

‘They had a clear shot at me, but they didn’t take it. They deliberately 
fenced me off from the action. They dropped a load of bricks in the road to 
block my way to her.’ Hector and Paddy were both silent, pondering the 
conundrum.

‘I don’t know the answer to that. It doesn’t make sense,’ Paddy 
admitted at last. ‘Maybe they had been warned not to tangle with you. I just 
don’t know. It will become clearer as we work through the rest of it. But we 
dare not take any chances with your Catherine. We have to hide her away where 
they can’t find her.’

‘Okay, Paddy, before you leave Abu Zara I want you to set up a safe house 
there for Catherine. Try to get the top floor of one of the new skyscrapers the 
Emir is building on the waterfront; something that we can defend easily.’

‘I’ll talk to Prince Mohammed himself. No problem. But it might take some 
time. Perhaps even a couple of weeks.’ The prince was the brother-in-law of 
the Emir and he controlled not only the treasury, the army and the police force 
but the state building programme as well. He was indebted to Bannock Oil, the 
company which had drilled the hole that made Abu Zara one of the most 
prosperous of the smaller states on the globe.

‘Good man, Paddy! Let me know what you can find for us. I’ll meet you.’ 
He rang off and pressed the intercom button. In the office at the end of the 
long passage Agatha, Hazel’s secretary, answered at once.

‘Agatha, please come to my office.’

‘Is Mrs Cross with you, sir? I have some letters for her to sign.’

‘Come to my office, and I will explain everything.’

When Agatha knocked, Hector pressed the electrical release for the door under 
the panel beside his knee and the door clicked open. Agatha entered. She was 
dressed in a sober grey business suit. Her grey hair was neatly coiffured. She 
had worked for Hazel since her marriage to Henry Bannock.

‘Take a chair, please,’ said Hector.

She sat in the chair facing him and smoothed her skirt over her knees.

‘I have tragic news, Agatha.’

She half rose from the chair, her face distorting with dread. ‘It’s Mrs 
Cross, isn’t it? Something terrible…’

‘Sit down, Agatha. I rely on you to be calm and strong, as you always are.’ 
He drew a deep breath and said the fateful words. ‘My wife is dead.’

She began to weep silently and softly. ‘How did she die? She was so young and 
vital. It doesn’t seem possible.’

‘She was murdered,’ he said, and she stood up abruptly.

‘May I use your toilet please, Mr Cross? I think I am going to be sick.’

‘Take as long as you need.’ He listened to the soft sounds of her distress. 
Then at last the toilet flushed and she came out. Her eyes were red, but every 
hair on her head was in place.

She sat down on the chair and looked at him. ‘You have been crying also.’ 
He inclined his head in assent, and she went on. ‘What about your baby?’

‘It’s a girl,’ he replied, and she smiled sadly.

‘Yes, Hazel and I knew that. Is she well?’

‘She is very well. But we have to be extremely careful not to let the fact of 
her birth and survival become public. If that happens she will be in as great a 
danger as Hazel was. We have to hide her. I will need your help.’

‘You shall have it, of course.’

‘First things first. I want you to find a firm of undertakers in Winchester. 
As soon as the police have conducted their investigations and released her 
body, the undertakers must take my wife from the mortuary at the RHCH and 
prepare her for cremation. Then they must make arrangements at the crematorium 
for it to be done as soon as possible.’

‘What else?’

‘There is a large buff envelope with red wax seals in my wife’s safe. 
Please bring it to me.’

‘Very well. I know the envelope you are talking about.’ She stood up and 
looked at him steadily. ‘We must both be brave,’ she said. ‘She would 
have expected that of us.’

Agatha left the room but returned within a few minutes and laid the buff 
envelope on Hector’s desk.

‘Thank you, Agatha. Now, one other thing. We must inform all those who need 
to know of what has happened to my wife. Please go through Hazel’s contact 
book and make a list of their names for me. I will compose a message to go out 
to all of them.’

Hector waited until she had left the room before he studied the envelope. It 
was addressed to him in her hand. He turned it over and made sure the seals 
were intact.

Hazel had written on the back of the envelope in her bold script: To Be Opened 
Only In The Event Of My Death.

Then he split the flap of the envelope with the curved Arabian dagger he used 
as a paper knife. He slid out a thick sheaf of documents. To the top of this 
pile a letter was appended by a paper clip. He recognized her handwriting and 
felt a sharp pang as he read the salutation:

My darling Hector,

I hope you will never read this, because if you do it will mean that the 
unthinkable has happened and you and I will be parted for ever …

Then the tone of the letter became more business-like. She was detailing for 
him the extent and the disposition of her estate.

… Most of the property that has been at my disposal during my lifetime is in 
fact owned by the Henry Bannock Family Trust. This includes the ranch in 
Houston as well as the one in Colorado, the apartments in Washington and San 
Francisco, the house in Belgravia and Brandon Hall in Hampshire. All of these 
will revert to the trust on my death …

Hector grunted. None of this surprised him. He would never have contemplated 
continuing to live in any of those grand homes. Not with Hazel’s ghost 
walking beside him through the empty rooms.

All I truly hold in my own name is the island in the Seychelles and 4.75% of 
the market capitalization of Bannock Oil. In terms of Henry’s will I 
administered and voted the other 48%, but those stocks also revert to the Trust 
on my death.

If you and I have any children of our own they will be generously taken care of 
by the Trust. Henry was a good and saintly man. He knew he would almost 
certainly go first, and that I would probably marry again. He did not want me 
and my still unborn children to be punished for that. I am certain he has made 
arrangements for any of my children, whether he is the father or not.

You are really and truly going to love dealing with the trustees, but you will 
have to do so on our children’s behalf. I will use your own idiom to describe 
these gentlemen to you.

A bunch of tight-assed lawyers with faces like piss-pots.

Please be gentle with them, darling, even if they drive you mad with 
frustration. Henry bound them to a vow of silence. They can’t and won’t 
tell you anything about the Trust. They won’t tell you the names of the other 
beneficiaries or what assets the Trust owns. Henry deliberately chose the 
Cayman Islands as a base for the Trust, because that little state enforces a 
non-disclosure rule. Not even an order from the Supreme Court of the USA will 
make them budge.

However, you can rest assured that our children will get everything they need 
and a lot they don’t really need, without a quibble from the trustees. Henry 
was always very generous. One of his stipulations is that every dollar earned 
by a beneficiary will be supplemented by the Trust with three dollars. So when 
Cayla earned $100 baby-sitting for a neighbour the Trust paid her out another 
$300. When I collected a few million dollars in director’s fees from Bannock 
Oil … Well, need I say more?

The chief trustee of the Henry Bannock Family Trust is Ronald Bunter of Bunter 
and Theobald Inc., a law firm in Houston, Texas. Agatha will be able to give 
you his address and telephone numbers.

What else is there? Oh yes! In addition to the above I have a few roubles and 
shekels and other loose change placed with sundry investment banks and 
financial institutions in various parts of the world. I am not entirely certain 
how much there is, but at the last count it was roughly five or six hundred 
million dollars. There is a list of these banks attached to this letter 
together with the names of the officials that handle my accounts and the 
appropriate passwords to give you access. These are all numbered accounts so 
you will have access to them immediately without having to jump through any 
hoops. Nor will you have to pay any taxes on them, unless you want to. If I 
know you as I think I do, my silly darling, you will want to do just that.

What was the Gospel according to St Hector that you preached to me?

‘Pay all the taxes that you owe. Not a penny less and not a penny more. That 
is the only way you will sleep well at night.’

You always knew how to make me laugh.

The G5 belongs to Bannock Oil, and the Boeing Business Jet belongs to the 
Trust. But as you are a director of Bannock Oil you will always have one of the 
other company jets at your disposal. Okay, I know you prefer flying commercial, 
plebeian that you are. All the cars and race horses are mine. So drive them 
carefully and bet on them wisely. Sadly, the paintings belong to the Trust; all 
those lovely Gauguins and Monets (Sigh!). The clothes, shoes and handbags, the 
furs and all the jewellery are mine; as are all the other odds and ends lying 
around. That’s just about it.

I leave all of this to you in my will, to which this epistle is attached.

Goodbye, Hector, my true love. I really didn’t want to leave you; I was 
having so much fun.

I will love you through eternity,





Hazel



One last thought, my dearest darling. Do not pine too long over my departure. 
Remember me with joy, but find yourself another companion. A man like you was 
never designed to live like a monk. However, make sure she is a good woman, or 
else I will come back and haunt her.

He jumped up from his desk and went through the double doors onto the balcony. 
He leaned on the parapet and looked down on the river, but the lovely view was 
blurred by the tears in his eyes.

‘I never wanted any of that. It’s far too much. Four and three-quarter per 
cent of all the issued stock of Bannock Oil? My God! That’s an obscene amount 
of money. All I ever really wanted was you.’

In the study behind him the intercom chirped and he went back to his desk and 
picked up the receiver. ‘Yes, Agatha?’

‘I have the list you asked for, Mr Cross.’

‘Thank you. Please bring it through to me.’

The list that Agatha had prepared comprised over five hundred names, all 
Hazel’s friends and business associates. With a ballpoint in hand, Hector 
pruned it down to four hundred and ten. Then he circled a number of the names.

‘These are the ones that must know immediately. These people must be the 
first to know ahead of all the others and before the media storm bursts. You 
can send the others tomorrow.’ Amongst the urgent messages were those for 
John Nelson in South Africa, brother of Hazel’s mother Grace, and John 
Bigelow in Houston, the former Republican senator, who was the vice-president 
of Bannock Oil under Hazel, who was the president and CEO. Another name he had 
circled was Ronald Bunter’s.

Hector flipped over a leaf in his notepad and wrote on a clean sheet, ‘It 
distresses me to have to inform you of the death of my beloved wife Hazel 
Bannock-Cross in tragic circumstances. Invitations to her Memorial Service will 
follow shortly. Hector Cross.’

Agatha took the amended list and the draft message from him, and then reminded 
him, ‘It’s almost two o’clock. The staff are already waiting for you in 
the blue drawing room, sir.’

*

All the employees of Brandon Hall, from the butler to the gamekeepers and water 
bailiffs, and from the matron to the chambermaids, were gathered in the blue 
drawing room. The men stood along the wall while the women were seated 
awkwardly and self-consciously on the sofas and chairs.

Hector wanted very much to get it over with. These were all fine people and had 
rendered excellent service. He did not want to turn them out into a job market 
that was already glutted by the economic recession. He steeled himself and told 
them about Hazel. There were gasps of shock and exclamations of disbelief. Some 
of the women began to weep.

‘Brandon Hall will probably have to be sold. I will do my utmost to see that 
you are re-employed by whoever takes over here. But whatever happens you will 
all receive two years’ severance pay.’ He went on to thank them for their 
loyalty and hard work, and then invited all of them to pay their last respects 
to Hazel at the funeral service in the crematorium. Finally he warned them, 
‘There are going to be swarms of reporters buzzing around here like flies, 
trying to get you to reveal details of our private lives and my wife’s death. 
Please don’t speak to them. If they offer you money tell me, and I will pay 
you double to keep quiet. Thank you.’

When they began to file from the room Hector asked the two nursemaids, that 
Hazel had hired, to remain behind.

‘Termination of employment does not apply to you two ladies. My wife gave 
birth to a little girl before she passed away. I shall need both of you to take 
care of her.’ They perked up immediately.

‘A girl! How wonderful. What’s her name, sir?’

‘Her name is Catherine. But please remember. You must not talk about this to 
any strangers. Now I want to have a quick look at the nursery to make sure 
everything is ready for the baby when she comes home from the hospital.’

The nursery suite was directly across the corridor from the master bedroom 
suite. It was entirely Hazel’s creation. Hector had kept well out of the way 
while she was planning and building it. It comprised five rooms, including the 
two bedrooms for the nurses. The colour scheme was baby pink. Hector was 
reminded of a throne room when he walked into the baby’s bedroom. In the 
centre of the floor was a large white and gold cot with a tented pink canopy 
spread over it. The walls were lined with shelves on which reposed an array of 
soft cuddly toys, a menagerie of bunnies, giraffes and zebras, lions and 
tigers. This was a display to outdo Hamleys toy shop at Christmas time.

The two nursemaids were young and deeply respectful. As they led him on a 
conducted tour, Hector looked wise and said little. In the end he gave his 
measured judgement: ‘Well, it seems that you have everything you need 
here.’ Silently he added, Except a more mature and experienced hand on the 
tiller. He thanked them and escaped back to his study.

*

As he sank into his swivel chair he saw on his computer screen that there was 
already a reply to his email from John Nelson, Hazel’s uncle in South Africa. 
He opened it. There was no salutation and the text was stark and bitter.

You are directly responsible for the deaths of the three people in my life that 
I have truly loved: my sister Grace, Cayla Bannock, my great-niece, and now 
Hazel herself.

The stench of death follows you, Hector Cross. You are as loathsome as a great 
black hyena. I curse you to your grave, and I shall spit upon it when at last 
they lay you in it.

Hector rocked back in his chair. ‘Poor John, you are really hurting. I 
understand. So am I.’ He deleted the message from his inbox. It took him a 
while to recover his equilibrium.

‘Keep busy!’ he urged himself. ‘Don’t brood. Move on. Keep moving.’ 
He swivelled his chair and reached for the telephone. He dialled the mobile 
number that Sergeant Evans had given him at the hospital and Evans answered 
almost immediately.

‘I am pleased you called me, Mr Cross. I am very sorry to hear about your 
wife, sir. The two perpetrators of the attack were dead when my colleagues 
reached the scene. At this stage we presume they were killed in the collision 
with your vehicle. The case is being handled by Detective Inspector Harlow at 
police headquarters in Winchester. I know he is anxious to take a statement 
from you. Please give him a call to arrange a time and place.’ Hector hung up 
and dialled 101, which took him through to the police non-emergency centre. 
From there he was passed up the chain of command until he reached Detective 
Inspector Harlow. They arranged to meet at police headquarters later that 
evening. He hung up and checked his wristwatch.

He rang down to the underground garage and told the chauffeur, ‘Please bring 
the Bentley around to the front door as soon as you can. I am going into 
town.’

‘Will you need me to drive you, sir?’ the chauffeur asked hopefully. He was 
clearly feeling underemployed.

‘Not today, Robert. But by the way, you can take the Range Rover to the panel 
beaters in town and have them repair the damage to the front end.’ Hector 
grabbed his coat off the hat stand as he left his study. He shrugged it on as 
he ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He was breathing hard as he 
reached the entrance lobby.

‘Puffing like an old man. You’ll have to sharpen up if you are going to 
survive this shit storm,’ he told himself. The butler had heard him coming 
and held the front door open for him.

‘Will you be home for dinner, sir?’ he asked.

‘Give my apologies to Chef. I will be eating out,’ Hector told him. The 
huge house and the empty rooms were already becoming oppressive. He would find 
his dinner in a pub somewhere. Maybe meet up with a local gamekeeper or a water 
bailiff with whom he could discuss fishing and shooting, and shake off the dark 
clouds of sorrow for a short while. The chauffeur already had the Bentley 
waiting for him.

He drove to the hospital first, and spent half an hour in the registrar’s 
office going through all the procedures for the issue of Hazel’s death 
certificate and Catherine’s birth certificate, which entailed the production 
of his own passport. From what Hazel had written in her last letter to him, he 
was going to need these documents if he were to get the full attention of the 
trustees of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

From the registrar’s office he returned to the maternity section, where 
already the nurses knew him and his tragic circumstances well. Between 
themselves they had given him the nickname of ‘Daddy Heart Throb’, or DHT 
for short.

‘It’s not visiting hour yet,’ one of them told him sternly, and then her 
tone mellowed. ‘But for you we can make an exception, Mr Cross.’

She led him through a door marked ‘No Entry. Strictly Private.’ Then she 
fitted him with a gauze mask that covered his mouth and nose and took him into 
the nursery proper. Only three of the cots were occupied. From the middle cot 
she lifted a blanket-wrapped bundle and placed it in his arms.

‘Ten minutes, no more. Then I am coming back to evict you,’ she warned him.

His conversation with Catherine was predictably one-sided. He tried out his own 
version of baby talk on her, to which she responded by blowing bubbles and 
falling asleep. He rocked her in his arms and studied her face while she slept. 
When the nurse returned he relinquished her reluctantly.

At ten minutes to six he went out into the car park and waited until Sister 
Bonnie Hepworth drove up in an elderly Mini Cooper with faded British racing 
green paintwork and Formula One stripes. As she parked he opened the car door 
for her. She looked startled, until she recognized him.

‘May I talk to you for a few minutes, Sister?’ he asked.

‘My pleasure I’m sure, Mr Cross.’

‘Do you have children of your own to look after?’ he asked seriously.

‘I wish I did, but I don’t.’

‘Then perhaps we can arrange that. I want to offer you a job,’ he said.

‘I already have a job,’ she replied, and then she back-tracked. ‘What 
job?’

‘Head nurse to my daughter, Catherine. I know you are very experienced and 
good with babies. I think my Catherine likes you already. You will have two 
other younger nurses working under you.’

‘But, but I already have a job,’ she repeated. She flapped her hands in 
confusion.

‘How much are they paying you here?’ he insisted.

‘Forty thousand a year.’

‘I’ll make that one hundred and twenty thousand,’ he said, and she gulped.

‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled. ‘What about my pension?’

‘How much is it?’

‘Around about one hundred thou paid up with twenty-three years to term.’

‘I’ll double that and make it open ended. No retrenchment because of age. 
You can stay with us as long as you like. Think about it, Bonnie. You can tell 
me your decision tomorrow when I come to visit Catherine.’

He turned away and walked to his silver Bentley parked at the end of the row. 
He sensed Bonnie’s eyes on him as he opened the door.

‘Mr Cross,’ she called after him urgently, ‘I’ve thought about it.’

He looked back at her over his shoulder. ‘And?’ he asked.

‘You have got yourself a deal.’

He turned back to face her. ‘You had better give me your number.’ She 
recited the number and he committed it to memory. ‘I’ll call you,’ he 
said. ‘We can work out the details. In the meantime you had best give in your 
notice here.’ He gave her a quick firm handshake. ‘Welcome on board, Sister 
Bonnie.’ He went back to the Bentley and drove down to police headquarters.

*

Detective Inspector Harlow was fortyish, overweight and balding. His eyes 
behind the steel-rimmed spectacles were a washed-out brown, world weary and 
wise. He stood up and came around his desk to shake Hector’s hand.

‘My commiserations on your loss, sir. Please be seated. Can I get you a cup 
of tea or coffee?’

‘Coffee. Black. No sugar.’

Harlow obliged and Hector sipped the foul-tasting brew.

‘Are you ready to begin?’ Harlow asked. Hector set the mug aside and Harlow 
led him through a detailed description of the events leading up to the 
murderous attack on Hazel, his own efforts to ward off the assailants and his 
subsequent actions up until the chance meeting with Sergeant Evans in the 
patrol car.

Hector omitted only a detailed description of the driver of the French van that 
had dropped bricks on the road to head him off. When Harlow pressed him, Hector 
told him, ‘He was wearing a rubber mask, and I only saw him for a second as 
he drove past me.’

‘You couldn’t tell his nationality?’

‘His bare arm was black. That is all I could be sure of. Sorry, but it was 
just a fleeting glance.’ To himself he mused, If anybody gets to question 
that buckaroo it’s going to be me and Paddy O’Quinn. There’ll be no due 
process, nor reading him his rights when we begin to take him apart.

At last Harlow was satisfied. ‘Yes. That all fits in with what we found at 
the scene.’

Hector read through the statement Harlow handed him and signed it. ‘I heard 
from Sergeant Evans that the two perpetrators were dead when you found them,’ 
he said.

‘That is correct, Mr Cross,’ Harlow confirmed.

‘Have you managed to identify them, Inspector?’

‘Yes. We had an immediate match on their fingerprints. Both of them have 
criminal records.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and brought out a thin 
sheaf of papers. He passed them one at a time across the desk to Hector. The 
first was a police mugshot. Hector recognized it at once.

‘Yes! He was the driver of the motorcycle.’

Harlow dropped his eyes to the papers in his hand and read aloud. ‘His name 
was Victor Emmanuel Dadu. Twenty-four years old. British citizen. Born in 
Birmingham. Both parents emigrated from Kenya in 1981. No fixed address. Three 
criminal convictions. Served six months in 2004 in Feltham Young Offenders 
Institution for car theft; three months in 2009 for aggravated robbery; three 
months in 2011 for public violence, mixed up in the 2011 summer riots. In all 
other respects a nice sweet boy.’ He turned over the next sheet of paper and 
passed it to Hector.

‘Yes.’ Hector glanced at the photograph. ‘That’s the shooter, the 
filthy little swine who murdered my wife.’

Harlow frowned at the outburst but went on reading from the papers in his hand. 
‘He was Ayan Brightboy Daimar. Age twenty-three years. Born in Mogadishu, 
Somalia. Illegal immigrant. Served one year in 2009 for housebreaking and 
burglary. Appealed against deportation and was granted refugee status in 
2010.’

Hector nodded noncommittally, pleased that his first appraisal had been 
confirmed. Somalia. Another pointer towards the Tippoo Tip clan. It’s 
starting to come together neatly, he thought, and looked across at Harlow.

‘Is there anything else I can do to assist you?’ he asked.

‘Thank you for your time, Mr Cross. If I need to speak to you again I have 
your contact details. If we are able to apprehend the driver of the French van 
we will need you to give evidence at his trial. Once again, my deepest 
condolences on the death of your wife. Please rest assured that we will leave 
no stone unturned to find all those involved in this dreadful business.’

On the way back to Brandon Hall Hector stopped at the Flag and Bear at 
Smallbridge. He finished half a serving of greasy cottage pie and less than 
half a pint of warm draught beer before the bold stares and pointed remarks of 
two heavily made-up young ladies seated at the bar began to annoy him. He drove 
back to the Hall, took a couple of Melatonin and fell into the big double bed.

He woke in the dawn to the sense of something terribly wrong. He lay and 
listened for her breathing. The silence was complete. Without opening his eyes, 
he reached for her but the sheets on her side of the bed were cold. He opened 
his eyes and turned his head and saw that she was truly gone. Then the pain 
began again, like a deep-rooted cancer, unrelenting and scarcely endurable.

*

He had to have a focus for his anger and his hatred. He jumped out of the bed 
and went to the bathroom. As soon as he had showered he went down to his study. 
He switched on his desktop computer. Even though he knew it was much too soon, 
he hoped that Paddy had something for him already. However, as soon as he 
opened his email account he saw that his inbox was overloaded. He skimmed 
through the first few email messages and saw they were all messages of 
condolence. He realized what had happened.

The rabid dogs of the press had the story. How had they got on to it so quickly?

Against his better judgement, he opened the home page of the Sun, one of Rupert 
Murdoch’s notorious rags. Above a photograph of Hazel in furs and diamonds 
descending from her Rolls with Hector in the background the headline blared out 
at him: ‘Billionairess gunned down on country road – Kills two of her 
attackers before she dies.’

It was a mangled piece of reportage. The only part of it that was correct was 
that Hazel was dead. There was no mention of Catherine’s birth.

‘Give thanks for small mercies.’ He worked through all the other websites. 
Every major paper had the story. The Times’ report was dignified and 
reserved, those of the Mail and the Telegraph were less so, but none of them 
reported Catherine’s birth. He was mightily relieved.

I have to get her out of that bloody hospital sharpish. The news hounds 
obviously have it staked out. His blood was up again, and he was ready to take 
on the day. There was nothing from Paddy, but he knew it was too soon to expect 
anything.

John Bigelow had sent a long email. On behalf of all the other directors of 
Bannock Oil he expressed his shock and horror at Hazel’s murder. He had 
already made arrangements for a memorial service to be held for her in Houston, 
and he went on,

I would like to have your permission to arrange a similar service in London, 
where Hazel had so many friends and business associates. I have asked the US 
Ambassador to the Court of St James, who is an old friend of mine, to use his 
good offices to reserve the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar 
Square for the purpose. I have suggested a date two weeks from now to give 
those who wish to attend, and there will be many of these, the opportunity to 
arrange their travel plans.

I do hope that you are not contemplating resigning from the board of Bannock 
Oil because of this tragic business. You are highly thought of by all your 
fellow directors, and your contributions are valuable and important.

‘You are not going to get rid of me that easily, Biggles. I need you as much 
as you say you need me,’ he said to himself. The Bannock infrastructure would 
give him the clout and wherewithal to enable him to take down all the bastards 
who’d done this to Hazel.

He replied to the company vice-president thanking him, accepting his offer and 
assuring him of his wish to remain on the Bannock Oil board. He told him that 
he considered it his duty to the memory of Hazel to continue the work that she 
had devoted so much of her life to.

He worked quickly down the column of emails and deleted great swathes of them. 
Then one caught his eye, and he opened it. It was from Ronald Bunter, the chief 
trustee of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

Dear Mr Cross,

I was deeply saddened to receive your email. I would like you to accept my 
condolences on the death of your wife, Mrs Hazel Bannock-Cross. She was a 
beautiful lady of great presence and stature. She was also highly intelligent. 
I personally held her in the utmost respect and admiration.

Most fortunately, I happen to be in London on business at this very time. I am 
staying at the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly until Saturday. The telephone number of 
the switchboard is 0207 493 8181 and my suite number is 1101.

As you are the executor of your wife’s last will and testament, I believe it 
is of the utmost importance that we should meet at your very earliest 
convenience. Please telephone me to arrange a meeting.

Yours very sincerely,





Ronald Bunter

Hector reached for the telephone and dialled the number. The switchboard 
operator answered him almost immediately and transferred him to Suite 1101. His 
call was answered by a woman’s voice.

‘Good morning. This is Jo Stanley, legal assistant to Mr Ronald Bunter. How 
may I assist you?’ The accent was mid-Atlantic, the modulation was crisp and 
controlled.

‘May I speak to Mr Ronald Bunter, please?’

‘Who may I say is calling?’

‘My name is Hector Cross.’

‘Oh, goodness gracious. Mr Bunter is expecting your call. Please hold on.’

He smiled at the old-fashioned expression ‘Goodness gracious!’ The only 
other person he had ever heard use it was his own mother.

Within a minute Bunter came on the line. His voice was thin and precise; a 
priggish old maid’s voice.

‘Mr Cross, it’s so good of you to call.’

‘Mr Bunter, when and where can we meet?’

‘I will be free after six o’clock this afternoon. I understand that you 
live out of town. Unfortunately I am without transport…’

‘I can come to you at the Ritz.’

‘Yes, that would be very convenient.’

He worked all the rest of the day, making phone calls and receiving them; 
clearing up all the paperwork on his desk. A few minutes after one o’clock he 
went down to the wet room and slipped on his waders, then picked up his fly rod 
from the rack and went out to the river. There was a good fish rising under the 
trailing willow branches in Honeymoon Pool, which Hazel had named while they 
sat on the bank holding hands.

The fish was in a difficult position to reach with a cast from this bank. But 
Hector tied on a Daddy Longlegs dry, and with his third cast he achieved a 
perfect drift over the trout’s lie. It came up in a flashing roll, all silver 
and crimson, and he set the hook. For fifteen minutes he thought of nothing but 
the fish as it charged wildly about the pool. When at last he had it laid out 
on the bank he knelt over it for a moment admiring its elegant lines and 
shimmering beauty, then he put it to rest with a sharp blow of the priest, the 
small stag-horn club with which the angler administers the last rites. The chef 
grilled it with wild mushrooms, and Hector ate lunch on the terrace.

After he had eaten he changed into a dark business suit and ordered the Bentley 
again. He liked driving it. It handled sweetly. He stopped over at the hospital 
and spent a stolen hour with Catherine.

She was getting more beautiful every day, he decided. When he was finally 
evicted from Maternity he went to see Doctor Naidoo.

‘When will you be able to discharge my daughter, Doctor?’

The doctor studied Catherine’s file. ‘She is doing very well. Have you made 
arrangements for her to be cared for, Mr Cross?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Yes, you have indeed. I understand you have hijacked one of my best 
nurses.’

‘Guilty as charged,’ Hector admitted.

The doctor looked sorrowful. ‘Okay. I am going to discharge your daughter 
tomorrow morning after my ward rounds. You can sign for her and take her 
away.’ As he walked out into the car park, Hector felt strangely elated at 
the prospect of having that tiny scrap of humanity being given into his care. 
Catherine was all he had left that was truly part of Hazel.

He took the London road.

*

Hector handed over the Bentley to the doorman at the side entrance to the Ritz 
and he ran up the steps to the hotel lobby. He paused in front of the 
concierge’s desk. There were three or four guests ahead of him waiting to see 
the concierge and he took his place at the back of the line. He glanced 
casually around the grand lobby and into the lounge.

The sacrosanct ritual of British afternoon tea was in full swing and the tables 
in the hotel lounge were almost all taken. Sitting on her own at a table facing 
the lobby was a woman. As his eyes passed over her, she stood up and looked 
directly at him. His gaze darted back to her. She was tall and strikingly 
beautiful. Her hair was glossy black, with russet highlights. Her eyes were 
wide set in a heart-shaped face. Even across the lounge he could see that they 
were green, sea-green, and serene. She walked towards him on long slim legs. 
Her pencil skirt was an inch above her knees. Her high heels accentuated the 
fine lines of her calves. Her hips were narrow but rounded. Her breasts were 
high and full under the tailored grey suit. She stopped in front of him and 
smiled. It was a reserved and guarded smile, but enough to reveal that her 
teeth were even and sparkling white. She held out her hand.

‘Mr Cross?’ she asked. ‘I am Jo Stanley.’ Her voice was soft and gently 
modulated, but her enunciation was clear and compelling. He took her hand.

‘Yes, I am Hector Cross. I am pleased to meet you, Miss Stanley.’

‘Mr Bunter is expecting you. May I show you up to the suite?’

There were others sharing the lift as they rode up, so they did not speak again 
until they stopped at the top floor. However, as they walked down the corridor 
and reached the double doors at the far end she touched his arm to detain him 
for a second and said quietly, ‘I am so very sorry about your wife. I knew 
her quite well. She was a wonderful person, so honest and strong. My heart 
bleeds for you.’

Hector saw that she meant every word and he was deeply touched. ‘Thank you. 
You are very kind.’

Ronald Bunter stood up from the sofa at the far end of the sitting room as they 
entered the suite. He was a small neat man with silver hair and gold-rimmed 
reading glasses. He was in shirtsleeves and he wore a pair of bright scarlet 
braces that were at odds with the rest of his sober attire. His expression was 
forbidding. Hector could barely suppress a smile as he recalled Hazel’s 
description: A bunch of tight-assed lawyers with faces like piss-pots. They 
shook hands and Hector caught the twinkle in Bunter’s pale eyes. Perhaps the 
dashing scarlet braces were indicative of his true nature.

‘Allow me once more to tender my condolences. These are tragic circumstances 
in which we meet, Mr Cross.’ He indicated the tabloid newspapers scattered on 
the table in front of him. Hazel’s photograph was on every front page. ‘And 
a grim business you and I have to deal with.’

‘Very kind and thoughtful of you, Mr Bunter.’

‘But before we proceed, first let me offer you some refreshment. Will it be 
tea or coffee?’

‘Coffee for me, please.’

‘For me too.’ Bunter glanced at his assistant. ‘Will you see to it 
please, Jo.’ While she phoned the order through to room service Bunter 
indicated the easy chair opposite him and Hector placed his briefcase on the 
table and sank into it.

‘I hope you will not object to my assistant being present during our meeting. 
I rely on her to keep accurate records of all that is discussed.’

‘Not at all.’

While they waited for the arrival of the room butler with the tea trolley they 
discussed the weather, which they agreed was very pleasant for this time of the 
year, and the run-up to the American presidential elections. Bunter was a solid 
Republican and Hector inclined more towards him. Jo poured the coffee and when 
they all had their bone-china cups Bunter looked across the table at Hector.

‘Shall we continue, Mr Cross?’ Bunter went on without waiting for his 
reply. ‘You are aware that I am the senior trustee of the Henry Bannock 
Family Trust in as much as I have the casting vote on the board?’

‘Yes, my wife explained that to me.’

‘Your wife was one of the beneficiaries of the Trust.’

‘How many other beneficiaries are there?’ Hector fired a ranging shot, and 
Bunter ducked it.

‘I am not at liberty to disclose that information.’ The twinkle was gone 
from his eyes and his expression was stony. Hazel had told him this would 
happen but he had to test it for himself. Bunter went on. ‘Your wife had the 
lifetime use of some of the Trust assets. Those do not form part of her estate. 
They must be returned to the control of the Board of Trustees.’

‘Yes, she warned me about that also. You will have my full cooperation.’

Bunter’s expression lightened slightly. ‘Thank you, Mr Cross. Would you 
also be able to provide us with a copy of Mrs Bannock-Cross’s death 
certificate? It would save a great deal of trouble.’

‘Yes, I can do that immediately.’ Hector opened his briefcase and took from 
it a transparent plastic folder. He extracted the document and slipped it 
across the table. Bunter perused it briefly.

‘You are very efficient, Mr Cross.’

‘I think you will also require the birth certificate of my wife’s 
daughter?’ Hector took another document from the plastic folder.

‘Thank you, but we do have originals of both Cayla Bannock’s birth 
certificate and her death certificate on file.’

‘No. I was not referring to Cayla Bannock. I was talking about Catherine 
Cayla Bannock-Cross.’

Bunter looked startled.

Score one to me, sir, Hector thought with satisfaction. He guessed that it was 
not easy to win a point from this little man.

Bunter recovered swiftly. ‘I beg your pardon, but I do not follow you, Mr 
Cross. Your wife had only one daughter, surely?’

Hector enjoyed his discomfort for a few moments. Then he told him, ‘Five 
hours before my wife’s death she gave birth, by Caesarean section, to a baby 
girl. She wanted this child to be named Catherine Cayla. Here is Catherine’s 
birth certificate.’

Bunter reached across the table and took the document from his hand. He studied 
it avidly, muttering to himself. ‘Extraordinary. What a remarkable turn of 
events. A spark of beauty lighting for an instant the dun and gloomy clouds of 
tragedy.’ Then he looked up at Hector, and he actually smiled. ‘I do 
congratulate you as the father, Mr Cross.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bunter.’ Hector returned his smile, and then he felt a light 
touch on his arm. He looked down and saw that Jo Stanley had leaned forward and 
placed a hand on his forearm. ‘I am so very happy for you. I know that 
Catherine will be a great consolation for you,’ she said as if she truly 
meant it.

Bunter went on speaking. ‘This is of the greatest significance to the Trust. 
Catherine will be a full beneficiary.’

‘Even if she is not a blood relative of Henry Bannock’s?’ Hector was 
drawing him out again.

‘No doubt about it,’ Bunter said. ‘Henry was a remarkable man. One of the 
finest men I have ever known. There was nothing small or mean about him. From 
now on until the end of her days the Trust will be fully responsible for all 
your daughter’s needs, no matter how large or how small. You must send the 
invoices to us, and if you are unable to provide invoices then brief 
descriptions of her needs and an estimate of the cost will suffice. The Trust 
will reimburse you immediately. When she grows old enough to seek paid 
employment of any kind, the Trust will quadruple her earnings. This will apply 
for her entire lifetime.’

‘Yes, Henry Bannock was an impressive man. I met him on a few occasions in 
the line of duty. He gave me the job as head of security at Bannock Oil,’ 
Hector agreed.

‘Yes, I know. He mentioned your name. He liked you,’ Bunter replied.

‘That is truly gratifying,’ Hector said.

Bunter glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Twenty after six. I suppose it is still 
rather early, but shouldn’t we wet your daughter’s head to welcome her into 
this wicked world?’ He did not wait for a reply but turned to Jo Stanley. 
‘Jo, my dear, I think I saw a bottle of Dom Pérignon in the minibar.’

Hector drank the flute of champagne slowly. The company was pleasing and he was 
reluctant to return to the empty hall. He was surprised when Bunter invited him 
to stay for dinner. The three of them dined in the splendour of the Ritz 
restaurant. Bunter was a gracious host; Jo Stanley was a good listener. It was 
not an occasion for merriment, but once she laughed at something Hector said, 
and her laughter was even more musical than her speaking voice. When Hector 
left, they both walked with him to the front door of the hotel. Although it had 
been a friendly dinner they were not yet on first-name terms. It was still Mr 
Cross, Mr Bunter and Miss Stanley.

When they shook hands Bunter told Hector, ‘Jo and I are flying back to 
Houston tomorrow, but remember I am always just a phone call away if Catherine 
Cayla should require anything.’

When Hector offered Jo Stanley his hand in farewell she took it without 
hesitation. Once again her beauty registered fleetingly in the recesses of his 
mind. But there was nothing subjective in it. It was like noticing a passing 
cloud or a blooming rose. The doorman was holding open the door of the Bentley 
for him. He turned away from her, slipped behind the wheel and drove away 
without looking back in the rear-view mirror.

*

The next morning Hector had with him Bonnie Hepworth and both the junior nurses 
when he arrived at the hospital in the Range Rover. They were fully equipped 
with carry cot, feeding bottles, packets of spare nappies and all the other 
paraphernalia necessary to support a single infant.

There was a small reception committee waiting for them in the maternity 
department. All the duty nurses had turned out to see Catherine off and to 
catch a last glimpse of her father. Hector carried his daughter out to the car 
with the rest of Catherine’s entourage trailing behind him. When they arrived 
back at Brandon Hall the entire household staff headed by Agatha and Reynolds 
were lined up under the portico to welcome them.

With appropriate ceremony Catherine was displayed to the company, and she 
immediately puked up half her bottle over her embroidered nightdress and the 
lapel of her father’s jacket. Hector was thoroughly alarmed and wanted to 
rush her back to the hospital. Nurse Bonnie managed to dissuade him.

‘That’s what babies do, Mr Cross.’

‘Well then, I wish she didn’t have to do it over me.’

Once Catherine was installed in her new quarters the big house came to life 
again with the constant excited bustle and the sound of female laughter. 
However, Hector seemed to stand apart from it all.

In her will Hazel had stipulated that in the event of her death she wished to 
be cremated as expeditiously as was possible. But the coroner would not release 
her body until the results of the post mortem examination were known. Hector 
lay awake at night tortured by images of the indignity and mutilation being 
perpetrated on the corpse of the lovely woman he would love for the rest of his 
life. It seemed an interminable wait, but eventually her remains were returned 
into his keeping.

Hector had wanted the cremation to be a very private ceremony but during the 
delay the news of her death had spread far and wide. Several hundred people had 
flown in from around the world to pay their last respects to her. In addition, 
the entire household staffs of both Brandon Hall and the Belgravia home wished 
to attend. The chapel was almost full. However, Hector was still trying to keep 
private the fact of the birth of Catherine Cayla. He left her in the care of 
her nurses.

Hazel’s coffin was closed. Hector had visited her in the funeral home the 
previous evening and he did not want her cold pale face exposed to all those 
curious eyes. He sat alone in the first row of pews. The chapel was filled with 
white arum lilies. A priest Hector had never met before read the service. 
Hector’s face remained expressionless as the clergyman pressed the button to 
send her coffin trundling along the conveyor and through the doors that slid 
aside to receive her. When the doors closed he stood up and walked back down 
the aisle. He looked straight ahead without acknowledging any other person in 
the crowded chapel.

That night he sat alone at the long dining-room table in Brandon Hall and drank 
two bottles of claret, seeking a state of oblivion. He remained sober but with 
every glass of wine he consumed his anger burned higher until it became a 
raging inferno that threatened to consume him.

*

When he awoke the next morning he was sober and he had his anger under control. 
He took three aspirin and cleaned his teeth vigorously, his cure for a 
hangover. He showered and dressed. Then he went down to his study. The maid had 
left The Times on his desk. It was lying face-up so he could read the 
front-page headline from across the room. For a moment he was frozen with 
horror, then he roused himself and crossed the study with a few quick strides. 
He snatched up the paper.

Murdered Woman Gives Birth On Her Deathbed

It has emerged that mortally wounded billionaire heiress Hazel Bannock-Cross 
gave birth to a daughter five hours before she died from an assassin’s 
bullet. The infant is in good health and was discharged last Thursday from the 
Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester into the care of her father, Mr 
Hector Cross of Brandon Hall near Smallbridge in Hampshire …

Hector’s eyes darted down the page. The story was all there, and the facts 
were essentially correct. He crumpled the news-sheet into a ball and hurled it 
against the wall.

‘Bastards!’ he snarled. ‘Bloody bastards!’ He turned and ran back into 
the passage and up the stairs two at a time to the next floor. He burst into 
the nursery and then checked himself in the doorway. Catherine lay stark naked 
and tummy down on the table. She was waving her legs in the air as Bonnie 
stooped over her, sprinkling her pink bottom with white talcum powder.

‘Mr Cross!’ she gasped with shock. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ Hector backed away. ‘I just wanted to check on something. Is 
everything all right?’

Bonnie smiled. ‘Oh, yes. We have just finished up our entire bottle and done 
a lovely big poo.’ Her use of the plural conjured up a macabre image in 
Hector’s mind.

‘That’s good. That’s very good. Now listen to me, Bonnie. I want you to 
pack up everything here. We are moving up to the London house right away.’ 
The press had broadcast Catherine’s birth to the world. The Beast would know 
exactly where to find them.

‘Pack everything?’ Bonnie stared at him incredulously. ‘But we only just 
got here! Do you really want us to do that, sir?’

‘Yes, I really want you to do that. Just make sure you are ready to leave by 
one o’clock this afternoon.’

Hector left them and went back to his study. He picked up the internal phone 
and called the head gamekeeper’s cottage. ‘Paul, I want all the gates to 
the estate closed and locked. Put one of your underkeepers on guard at every 
entrance. They must all carry their shotguns. No stranger is allowed onto the 
estate. Do you understand?’

‘What about deliveries from the village, Mr Cross? We are expecting a van 
from Farnham’s with feed for the pheasant chicks.’

‘Make sure they know the driver by sight. No strangers.’ He dropped the 
phone back on its hook and looked around the room, making a list of the few 
items that he wanted to take up with him to London. There was not much. With 
her usual attention to detail, Hazel had duplicated most of the contents of the 
two houses. In most instances it was a case of walk out and walk in. Even 
Catherine had her own nursery waiting for her there. If only they had stayed in 
London on the fatal day, they would never have run into the ambush and perhaps 
she might still be alive. He wondered bitterly what was the title of the book 
she had wanted to collect from Brandon Hall that day.

He picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Belgravia house in London. 
The butler answered. ‘You have reached the Cross residence. How may I assist 
you?’

‘Morning, Stephen.’

‘Ah, Mr Cross! How are you, sir? We have all been so distressed about Mrs 
Cross. Thank you for inviting us to the service.’

‘Thank you, Stephen,’ Hector replied gruffly. ‘I will be arriving this 
afternoon with the new baby and her nurses. We will be staying for an 
indefinite period. Please have everything ready for our arrival.’

When they left Brandon Hall the gates to the estate were locked and Paul Stowe, 
the head keeper, was on guard with his shotgun under his arm. Hector rolled 
down the side window of the Range Rover to speak to him. Paul had served with 
the SAS, which was Hector’s old regiment. In Afghanistan he had been badly 
wounded in a firefight with the Taliban and after leaving hospital he was 
discharged from the army. Hector had not hesitated when Paul applied for the 
gamekeeper’s job, and he had never had any reason to regret the decision. 
Hector reinforced his instructions to keep the gates locked and allow no 
strangers into the grounds. Then they drove on and in the rear-view mirror he 
watched Paul close the heavy steel barred gates behind them. He drove into the 
underground parking garage at No. 11 in Belgravia three hours later. Hector had 
moderated his speed to give Catherine a smooth ride.

When Hector visited the nursery an hour after their arrival he found Catherine 
fed, burped and tucked up in her cot fast asleep. He relaxed for the first time 
that day.

*

One of the items he had brought with him from Brandon Hall was his favourite 
portrait of Hazel. He hung it on its hook facing his desk in the study before 
he even switched on his desktop computer.

As soon as the computer booted he logged on to his Gmail account. Near the top 
of the column of incoming messages was the one he had been keenly anticipating.

Nastiya and I arrive Emirates flight EK 005 at 1800 hours GMT this Thursday. 
Heathrow Terminal 3. Can you meet please? I have news. Paddy.

Twenty-four hours later when the two of them came through the arrivals gate 
Hector was waiting for them. Paddy’s craggy face was tanned cocoa brown. 
Nastiya’s face and bare arms were a glowing shade between copper and gold. 
They both looked fit and vital. Hector embraced each of them in turn. Their 
bodies were hard and lithe as those of trained athletes, which of course they 
were.

‘You are staying with me at Number Eleven,’ he told them.

‘I hoped you would say that,’ Nastiya replied. ‘It’s good to be treated 
like a duchess for a change.’

‘You are no duchess, Nazzy. You are a tsarina.’

‘What kind of bullshit you must speak all times, Hector Cross?’ She tried 
to look haughty, but she failed. Hector knew she secretly loved it when he 
called her that. She kissed both his cheeks.

They piled their luggage into the Range Rover. Paddy sat in the front passenger 
seat and Nastiya took the seat behind him. Hector suppressed a smile as he 
thought about how when Nastiya was not kicking the guts out of somebody who had 
annoyed her, she was convincingly playing the role of a subservient wife.

As soon as they were alone, both Paddy and Nastiya reiterated their 
commiserations on Hazel’s murder and spoke of their determination to revenge 
her. Hector responded awkwardly, maintaining a brave face with difficulty. It 
was a relief to all three of them when their conversation became more relaxed 
and commonplace. They had not been with each other for a while and so they 
exchanged news of their mutual friends and acquaintances and Paddy brought 
Hector up to date with the activities of Cross Bow Security.

Once they hit the motorway the traffic was light and Hector could give his full 
attention to the important issues.

‘So you say that you have news for me, Paddy? Good or bad?’

‘Good and bad. I’ll give you the good gen first. Nazzy has found a perfect 
safe house for your Catherine. As you suggested, it’s the entire top floor of 
one of Prince Mohammed’s new beachfront developments in Abu Zara. It is 
served by a private lift. It also has a helicopter landing pad and a swimming 
pool on the roof. There is plenty of space for a good security team on the 
site. We can make it impregnable. That’s the good gen.’

‘And the bad?’ Hector raised an eyebrow.

‘Princey wants one hundred and twenty million US for an outright sale, cash 
on signature of contract.’

‘Jesus!’ Hector exclaimed, and Paddy shook his head in disagreement.

‘Jesus isn’t involved in this deal. Princey doesn’t believe in him.’

‘Will he rent it to us?’

‘Yes, he will. But that’s not much of an improvement. He wants fifteen mill 
for a one-year rental. That’s his best price for good friends, or so he 
says.’

Hector thought quickly.

‘He has got us by the testicles,’ he said at last.

‘Not me, he hasn’t,’ Nastiya said smugly.

‘Can’t you keep that woman of yours under control, Paddy?’ Hector asked 
and relapsed into silence again while he pondered the problem. Ronald Bunter 
had assured him that the Bannock Trust would foot all Catherine’s expenses. 
This wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity. It was for Catherine’s safety; 
probably her very survival was at stake. Now was the time to put old Ronnie’s 
word to the test. If Bunter refused, Hector was determined that he would pick 
up the tab himself. God knows, Hazel had left him enough ‘small change’ to 
do the job, and then some. Catherine had to be moved to the safe house, and 
price didn’t come into the reckoning.

‘We have to take it. One year should see us running free. How soon can we 
move in?’ he asked Paddy.

‘Pretty much right away. Furnishings and fittings are included in Princey’s 
price. The property is highly liveable as it stands. You can add the finishing 
touches once we get Catherine safely installed. How long will it take you to 
get her down to Abu Zara?’

‘The sooner the quicker,’ Hector told him. ‘Every day increases the risk 
exponentially. Excuse me for a few minutes. I have to speak to a friend.’ He 
checked his wristwatch. Houston was six hours behind.

He had Ronald Bunter’s private number on his phone.

‘Bunter here.’ The unmistakable old maid’s voice broke his train of 
thought.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Bunter. It’s Hector Cross.’

‘It’s good to hear from you, Mr Cross. How can I help you?’

Hector told him, and Bunter listened silently until he had finished. Then he 
asked quietly, ‘What other options are there for safeguarding Catherine, Mr 
Cross?’

‘There are no other options, Mr Bunter. You know what they did to 
Catherine’s mother.’

‘I must speak to my fellow trustees. I’ll call you back before close of 
business today, Mr Cross.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bunter.’

He broke the connection and glanced across at Paddy. ‘Okay, what else have 
you got to tell me? You have that look on your face. You are holding an ace in 
the hole.’

‘We are almost at Number Eleven,’ Paddy demurred. ‘It’ll keep until we 
get there.’

‘Very well,’ Hector agreed reluctantly. ‘Your usual suite is ready for 
you two. But first I’ll take you to say hello to Catherine. Then I’ll give 
you half an hour to primp and preen. Hazel made it a rule of the house that 
gentlemen dress for dinner.’

‘I see no gentlemen around here,’ said Nastiya.

‘Don’t encourage her,’ Paddy said sadly. ‘Russian jokes are like 
Russian snipers; well camouflaged and difficult to see.’

*

When Nastiya laid eyes on Catherine for the first time a strange transformation 
came over her. She seemed to melt like a glittering sheet of titanium steel in 
the glow of an electric furnace. She took Catherine in her arms and spoke to 
her in Russian. Catherine’s milky blue eyes rolled around in their sockets 
short-sightedly as she tried to locate the source of these extraordinarily 
barbaric sounds. Then Nastiya looked up at Paddy accusingly.

‘Why don’t you give me one of these?’

‘Be fair!’ Paddy responded indignantly. ‘I’m trying my best, aren’t 
I?’ When he could drag Nastiya away from the nursery, Paddy led her up to 
their suite.

An hour later when they came downstairs again to Hector’s den, Paddy was 
wearing black tie and decorations, and Nastiya had her blonde hair up and her 
décolleté down.

‘My God, Paddy! You know how to pick them.’ Hector looked at her with 
exaggerated awe. ‘You’ve got a very fine-looking lady, there.’ Nastiya 
blew him a kiss. Hector had a vodka and lime juice ready for Nastiya and a 
large Jameson whiskey for Paddy.

‘Okay,’ he told them. ‘Sit. Drink. Then talk.’

Paddy took a sip from his glass and exhaled noisily. ‘You’ll no’ find 
anything to match that, this side of Dublin,’ he said in his broadest brogue.

‘Tell me something more interesting.’

‘Tariq has come up with a lead on somebody we missed when we thinned out 
Tippoo Tip’s brood.’

Hector sat up straight in his high-backed chair and set his own glass aside. 
‘I’m listening,’ he said quietly.

‘As we agreed, I sent Tariq back into Puntland. It’s his homeland and he 
blends in. He has family and friends there. He travelled by bus. First he went 
down to the old pirate base at Gandanga Bay. He found it completely deserted.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ Hector gave a grim smile. ‘We worked it 
over pretty thoroughly.’

‘Scorched earth,’ Paddy agreed. ‘After that, Tariq returned to Tippoo 
Tip’s stronghold at the Oasis of the Miracle where you rescued Cayla from the 
Beast. There were a few survivors living in the ruins. One of them had been a 
concubine of the Khan. Tariq says she is an ancient crone, blind as a bat and 
starving. Tariq fed her and jollied her along. Her name was Almas and although 
she couldn’t remember what she had eaten for breakfast she could remember 
everything from twenty years ago with absolute clarity. She knew the Tippoo Tip 
family tree by heart, back for two centuries. She claimed that she had borne 
the Khan twins: a boy and a girl. She told Tariq that her son was Kamal, who 
commanded the Khan’s fleet of pirate attack boats. That’s the same likely 
lad you shot dead on board the Golden Goose.’

‘Never forget him.’ Hector smiled. ‘It took five nine-millimetre rounds 
to quieten him down.’

‘He was a tough bastard,’ Paddy agreed.

‘Not so tough.’ Nastiya spoke for the first time. ‘He squealed like a 
baby when I bit his finger off.’

Hector laughed out loud. ‘Which reminds me never to make your wife mad.’

‘Actually, she’s a soft-hearted little thing when you get to know her.’ 
Paddy looked at Nastiya fondly. ‘However, I digress. According to the old 
woman who claimed to be Kamal’s mother, Kamal’s twin sister gave birth to a 
son when she was sixteen years of age. So this child would be the grandson of 
Tippoo Tip.’

‘Do tell!’ Hector urged him. ‘Did Tariq get his name? What happened to 
him? Is he still alive?’

‘His name was and is Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip. He left Africa as a young man 
of twenty or so and he came here to London to study Islamic Law at the Great 
Mosque in Regent’s Park.’

‘Is he still here in London? Does his grandmother know?’ Hector demanded.

‘No, she doesn’t know. In fact she knows very little about anything that 
recent. She lives with the fairies most of the time. She doesn’t know where 
she is herself, let alone where her grandson is. However, I phoned the London 
mosque and spoke to one of the mullahs there. He knew Aazim Muktar well. He has 
become an important cleric, highly regarded across the Middle East; a man with 
influence and power.’

‘All right, but where can we find him?’

‘Just across the Gulf from Abu Zara. He is now one of the senior mullahs at 
the Masjid Ibn Baaz Mosque, in Mecca. I sent Tariq to do a recce of the mosque. 
That’s why it took so long for me to come back to you. Tariq attended prayers 
there a number of times. He saw Aazim Muktar in the flesh and heard him preach. 
Apparently the mosque was packed. Aazim Muktar had the congregation eating out 
of his hand. The faithful come from all over the Middle East to listen to him. 
Even Tariq was seriously impressed. He says Aazim Muktar is a very holy man.’

‘I am pleased to hear that. So when I have finished with him Aazim Muktar 
will have a place to go where Allah will welcome him,’ Hector said grimly. 
‘How easy will it be to pick him up, Paddy?’

Paddy considered the question and then asked his own. ‘I take it you’re not 
considering a long-range sniper shot when he leaves the mosque?’

‘Correct,’ Hector agreed. ‘I want to look in his eyes and search his 
soul. I want him to know who I am and I want him to know what he has to pay 
for. I want to tell him about Hazel. Then I want him to see the black angel 
coming for him. I want him to die slowly and I want to hear his screams.’

Even Paddy was shaken by the force of Hector’s anger. It took him a while to 
consider his reply. ‘I am not saying it’s impossible, but snatching him 
will have its problems. At least we won’t have to parachute into a desert 
fortress the way we had to do to get at his grandfather. After one prayer 
ritual Tariq followed him and his entourage to where he lives in the temple 
compound only a kilometre or so from the mosque. He could not get close to the 
building without attracting undue attention to himself. But he says it’s a 
large building surrounded by a fairly substantial wall. It is a difficult place 
to approach; many eyes watching. There are armed guards at the gate. On the 
terms you have stipulated it might not be as easy as I, for one, would have 
liked.’

Hector picked up his glass and stared into it, swirling the golden whiskey in 
its depths. Before he could speak the phone in the pouch on his belt played the 
opening bars of ‘American Pie’.

‘Sorry, I’ll have to take this one.’ He lifted the phone to his ear. 
‘Cross speaking! Thanks for calling back, Mr Bunter. Do you have news for 
me?’

‘I have spoken to my colleagues and we are all agreed that the safe house for 
Catherine is a legitimate charge to the Trust, together with the costs of all 
the other security arrangements. Furthermore, at the moment the Trust’s 
Boeing Business Jet is hangared at Farnborough airport. The crew has been 
instructed to stand by to fly you and Catherine down to Abu Zara. Obviously the 
sooner we can get her out of harm’s way the better.’

‘I am very grateful to you and your fellow trustees, Mr Bunter.’

‘We can do no less, Mr Cross. Please feel free to call on us for anything 
further Catherine may require. Goodbye, sir.’ Hector returned the phone to 
its pouch.

‘Good man, Bunter,’ he said, and then looked back at Paddy. ‘Thank you, 
Paddy. You have given me plenty to think about.’ He glanced at his 
wristwatch. ‘But right this minute I am hungry. Shall we go through to the 
dining room and see what Chef has got for us?’

*

The first course was grilled Fine de Claire oysters on the half-shell, dressed 
in a heavenly mantle of Tabasco-tinted hollandaise sauce and accompanied by an 
ice-cold Chablis. Hector had just slipped the first oyster into his mouth and 
was rolling his eyes with pleasure when his iPhone rang again. He cursed around 
the oyster.

‘Who the hell rings at a time like this?’ He glanced at the illuminated 
screen on the phone. ‘It’s my gamekeeper at Brandon Hall. I don’t need to 
speak to him in the middle of dinner. Excuse me, while I switch off this 
infernal machine.’

‘Nyet, Hector,’ Nastiya told him. ‘That is not weary vice at a time like 
this.’ Hector knew she meant ‘not very wise’, and he hesitated. He had 
learned to respect Nastiya’s advice. She had the warrior’s instinct finely 
developed. Then he lifted the phone to his ear.

‘Paul, whatever it is, make it short. We are in the middle of dinner,’ he 
said and Paul Stowe’s voice was so raised and agitated that all of them 
seated at the dining room table could hear him clearly.

‘Sir, the Hall is on fire. At least four of our people are trapped in the 
flames.’

‘Oh my God, Paul! What started it?’

‘Incendiary grenades, sir.’ Paul was an old soldier. ‘I would know the 
smell of burning white phosphorus anywhere. There were two of them in quick 
succession. I heard the explosions and the next second the whole hall went up 
like a bonfire.’

‘Which part of the house did they hit?’ Hector demanded.

‘The bedroom wing. It looks like one grenade went in through your study 
windows below the master bedroom, and the other through the library window 
under the new nursery area.’

Swiftly Hector digested that information. The attackers must have known the 
layout of the house. They had made a very focussed attack. Hector had a vivid 
mental picture of what might have been the consequences if he and Catherine had 
been sleeping in the Hall this very evening. Thermate in an incendiary grenade 
burns at 2,200 degrees centigrade. It can melt steel almost instantaneously.

‘Did anyone get a look at the attackers? Do you have any idea who they are?’

‘Two scumbags got into the estate late this evening, probably around about 
dusk.’ Paul’s voice rang with certainty and outrage.

‘How do you know that, Paul?’

‘I found their car, a new Vauxhall Zafira, where they’d hidden it on the 
other side of our boundary wall opposite the Corner Stone Drive. I was on my 
way home when I noticed something that hadn’t been there yesterday, a pile of 
green branches. Because you had warned me to be on the lookout, I went to take 
a butcher’s and found the car hidden under the branches. Then I tracked the 
two thugs from there and found where they had climbed over our wall. It took me 
almost half an hour to get back to the Hall because I had to circle around to 
the stone bridge to cross the river. By that time it was dark and I was just 
crossing the lower meadow when I heard the grenades go off and saw the flames. 
It was no good trying to track them because it was too dark. Anyway, my first 
priority was to rescue any of our people who were trapped in the Hall. It’s a 
racing certainty that those thugs headed straight back to where they left their 
car. But of course the car won’t start, will it? I took care of that.’

‘How?’ Hector demanded.

‘Well, I had my Leatherman tool with me. So first thing I did when I found it 
was I pulled all the spark plugs out of the engine and tossed them in the 
river. The only way they are going to be going anywhere tonight is on foot.’

‘What are you doing now, Paul?’

‘I am trying to save some of those poor devils who are trapped in the fire. 
But I don’t think there is much hope. The flames are so fierce we can’t 
even get close. Already the entire roof is starting to collapse.’

‘You’ve done the right thing, Paul. I am coming down to give you a hand. 
This time of night there won’t be much traffic; I should be there in less 
than two hours.’ He cut the connection and looked at Paddy.

‘It’s the Beast again,’ Paddy said. ‘No question about it. They read 
the newspapers, so they know about Catherine and they think she is at Brandon 
Hall. They are after her.’ He paused and then added, ‘And you also, 
Hector.’

‘Get changed and let’s go,’ Hector said. They left the remains of the 
oysters and the wine untouched. They rushed up the main staircase and ran to 
their bedrooms. Only minutes later all three of them met on the staircase 
again, dressed in rough clothing. Hector was carrying an Irish fighting club 
made from blackthorn wood, a shillelagh. He tossed it onto the back seat when 
they reached the Rover in the underground garage.

Driving very fast along the almost deserted motorway, it took just under an 
hour and twenty minutes to reach Winchester. As they passed the town, Hector 
called Paul Stowe again.

‘Fill me in with what’s happening, Paul.’

‘The Fire Brigade have got the fire under control now, but it had just about 
burned itself out anyway. They have found two bodies. But it’s impossible to 
tell who they are. They are too badly burnt.’

‘Poor devils! Leave the firemen to their job. We must try and catch those 
bastards that put the grenades in. If they are trying to walk out they must 
still be on the road. We are coming through Winchester right now. We will 
search the road from here to Brandon Hall. But they might not have come this 
way. They might have gone south towards Southampton. Take one of the Land 
Rovers and cover that stretch of road. Have a couple of your underkeepers with 
you and make sure you are carrying shotguns. These are murderous swine we are 
dealing with.’ Hector cut the connection and spoke over his shoulder to 
Nastiya on the back seat.

‘There is a spotlight in the locker behind you. Get it out and plug it into 
the lighter socket next to the ashtray between the seats. Then open the sun 
roof. If you stand on the seat, even a little short-ass like you will be able 
to stick your head and shoulders out through the opening. Sweep both sides of 
the road with the spotlight. It’s fairly open ground from here to the 
turn-off to Brandon Hall, but they might hide in the trees when they see us 
coming.’

The road was still deserted as they sped along it. Country folk don’t keep 
late hours, so they did not see another vehicle for the next five miles. Then 
they came around a sharp turn through a stretch of woodland and ahead of them 
the road descended through open fields on both sides. Only two hundred yards 
ahead, full in the beam of the powerful spotlight that Nastiya was wielding, 
they picked up a pair of dark masculine figures trudging towards them down the 
white line in the centre of the road.

The woodland had screened the approaching lights until the Range Rover was 
close upon them, and now they were taken by surprise. For a few critical 
seconds they stood frozen as the Range Rover bore down on them.

Their faces were concealed, for they both wore hoodie jackets. Swiftly they 
recovered their wits, and they turned and ran. They were stupid enough to let 
themselves get caught out in the open, and dumb enough to run for it and 
confirm their guilt, but they were smart enough not to stay together. They 
split up as if by prior agreement. One of them left the road, scrambled over 
the fence and ran up the gentle slope through a freshly planted field of winter 
wheat, heading for the dark patch of trees that just showed against the stars 
near the crest.

The other man went in the opposite direction, over the fence and through the 
open field down towards what looked like a small stream running parallel to the 
road at the bottom of the hill.

When Hector reached the spot where they had left the road he slammed on the 
brakes and flung the door open. As he reached back to the seat behind him where 
the blackthorn shillelagh lay, he shouted, ‘Paddy, you and Nazzy take the one 
on your side. I’ll get the other bastard.’

Nastiya wriggled out onto the roof of the Rover, jumped and landed lightly in 
perfect balance on the verge. She reached the fence before Paddy was out of the 
side door. She used the slope of the embankment to gather momentum and she ran 
at the fence. She leapt at it and placed one hand on the top of a fence pole, 
jack-knifed her body and dropped over the far side. The sprouting wheat in the 
field was no more than a foot high and didn’t impede her at all. She gained 
on the fleeing figure as swiftly as a whippet running down a hare. She caught 
him long before he reached the tree line and while Paddy was still twenty yards 
behind them.

The man heard her light footsteps rustling the wheat stalks close behind him 
and he turned at bay. When he saw it was a skinny little girl pursuing him, he 
reached into his pocket. He brought out a flick knife and snapped open the 
blade. He dropped into a defensive crouch, and he presented the point of the 
weapon to her.

‘Come then, bitch,’ he panted at her. ‘I’m going to cut your stinking 
cunt out of you and stuff it up your arse.’ Nastiya never checked her charge. 
She went in fast and at the very last instant she dived feet-first under his 
guard, taking her weight on her shoulders as she hit the ground. Then she 
rebounded and at the same time shot out both legs with the speed and power of 
an arrow from a longbow.

Taken by surprise, the man was slow to react. He shouted with pain as Nastiya 
slammed the soles of her feet into his right wrist. Even above the sound of his 
agony, the crackle of his carpus bones breaking was sharp and clear. The knife 
flew from his hand in a high spinning arc. Nastiya used the impetus of her rush 
to flip back onto her feet. She caught the knife neatly by the handle as it 
dropped.

Nursing his shattered wrist, the man backed away from her but she followed him 
remorselessly, slashing the blade of the flick knife back and forth only inches 
from his face.

‘Down!’ she ordered him. ‘Get down on your knees, you dirty-mouth son of 
a Satan, before I cut out your stinking balls and make you eat them.’

‘Wait!’ he whimpered. ‘I’m doing it. I’ll do anything you say.’ He 
dropped to his knees, nursing his damaged wrist, setting himself up perfectly 
for her next kick. It caught him under his chin and he went over backwards and 
lay choking and bubbling blood from his half-severed tongue that he had bitten.

Paddy came up beside Nastiya and looked down at the writhing figure in the 
wheat.

‘Jesus and Maria, woman! You haven’t left much for me, have you?’

*

On the lower side of the road Hector was closing the gap on the man he was 
pursuing. He seemed much younger than Hector, but Hector was faster and fitter.

Hector wanted to avoid a hand-to-hand with somebody who would almost certainly 
be carrying a knife. When he was only a dozen paces behind his quarry, he swung 
the shillelagh back over his shoulder, and then whipped it forward again. 
Hector had spent his childhood in Africa and his small indigenous companions 
had all been experts with throwing sticks. Even the youngest of them could 
bring down a flying spurfowl at twenty paces. They had taught Hector well. The 
shillelagh cartwheeled into the back of the man’s legs and he went down in a 
heap with a cry of surprise.

Hector snatched up the shillelagh on the run and as he came up behind his 
fallen victim he made a quick calculation. If he broke the man’s leg that 
would certainly anchor him, but he would have to carry him back up the hill to 
where he had parked the car. On the other hand, a broken arm would anchor him 
almost as effectively, but he would still be able to hobble back to the Range 
Rover, especially if Hector gave him a little encouragement with the blunt end 
of the club. He stood over the man, who instinctively lifted both hands to 
shield his face. Hector hit him on the point of the elbow with a full swing of 
the shillelagh, and the man screamed as his elbow joint shattered.

Hector seized the wrist of his injured arm and twisted it. The man howled again 
and Hector levered him to his feet.

‘Christ, man, you’re hurting me,’ he blubbered.

‘You mustn’t say that,’ Hector told him. ‘You’re breaking my 
heart.’ He twisted the injured arm up between the man’s shoulder blades and 
frog-marched him back up the hill. When he reached the Range Rover he saw 
Nastiya and Paddy coming down the hill to join him. Paddy was carrying their 
captive over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

When he reached the fence he dumped his burden over the wire and called to 
Hector, ‘Have you had a good sniff of your nice young friend?’

‘I certainly have,’ Hector replied. ‘Mine smells of garlic. How about 
your beauty?’

‘Reeks of the stuff.’ Paddy looked stern.

‘What else smells like garlic? Please remind me,’ Hector asked.

‘Could it be burning white phosphorus from an incendiary grenade?’ Paddy 
asked.

Hector snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it!’ He gave the man’s broken arm a 
firm twist. ‘Now, we haven’t been burning down any houses recently, have 
we?’ His victim squealed shrilly. ‘I’ll take that as an affirmative,’ 
Hector said, and bundled him through the open rear door of the vehicle.

Paddy jumped over the fence and dragged the second man out of the ditch by his 
heels, picked him up bodily and threw him into the back of the Rover on top of 
his mate, and then Hector slammed the door and locked it from the outside.

‘Nazzy, please keep your new knife handy just in case one of these lovely 
lads gets a bit obstreperous,’ Hector warned her as they all climbed aboard. 
Before he started the engine Hector called Paul Stowe.

‘Okay, Paul. You can call it a day and come home. We have picked up both of 
the runners.’

He started the Rover and drove sedately back to the Brandon Hall Estate. When 
he crossed the bridge over the River Test and entered the main gates of the 
estate he did not drive directly to the Hall, but turned left and took the dirt 
road down to the Old Barn. This renovated building was used as a luncheon venue 
on shooting days. It was almost half a mile from the Hall, concealed from it by 
trees. Hector parked on the side of the building furthest from the main road. 
Nobody would be able to see or hear what was happening inside.

While Nastiya went ahead to unlock the front door and switch on the lights in 
the barn, Hector and Paddy dragged the two captives out of the back of the 
vehicle and followed her into the commodious building.

‘Keep an eye on our hostages, Paddy,’ Hector said, even though he could see 
there was no fight left in either of them. He went to the row of cupboards on 
the rear wall of the barn and came back with a large reel of yellow electrical 
cable and a pair of wire cutters. One at a time he trussed the two captives 
into a pair of straight-backed chairs at the dining table, leaving only their 
injured arms free. It was a neat and expert job. They were pinioned helplessly.

‘Okay, put your free arms on the table in front of you,’ he ordered. When 
they hesitated, Hector reached across the table and grabbed one of them by the 
wrist. He twisted it sharply. The man screamed and his face in the hood of his 
jacket went chalky white. Sweat burst out on his chin and forehead.

‘Do it!’ Hector insisted.

‘Okay! Okay! Just take it easy, man.’ The fellow mumbled around his 
lacerated tongue which had swollen to fill his mouth. Gingerly he stretched out 
his arm towards Nastiya, who was leaning across the table towards him. She 
slipped a loop of the yellow cable around his swollen wrist and tugged it tight.

‘Shit, man!’ he whined. ‘Do you want to kill me?’

‘A few things you need to know, comrade,’ she told him. ‘Firstly, I still 
don’t like your dirty speaking. Secondly, I am not a man. Thirdly, yes, I 
would like very much to enjoy killing you. Please give me an excuse to do 
that.’

The second captive had watched what had happened to his companion and he 
cooperated with alacrity, offering his injured arm to Paddy across the table 
without a quibble. Paddy slipped a loop of the cable over his wrist.

Hector stood behind the two prisoners and yanked the hoods down over their 
shoulders, leaving both their heads bare. Then he walked to the other side of 
the table and stood between Paddy and Nastiya. For a while he studied the two 
captives in front of him.

They were both in their twenties or early thirties; both white. He had expected 
them to be the same colour as the men who had killed Hazel.

Colour meant nothing, Hector reminded himself. Some of the worst swine he knew 
were white; and some of the best men were black.

He studied the man that Nastiya had caught. He was thickset; dark unruly hair; 
flat Slavic features; yellow pustules and bright acne scars on his chin and 
cheeks. He was sweating heavily with pain. He could not take his eyes off 
Nastiya, who was holding him on the end of the cable. She stared back at him 
coldly.

The second man was lanky in build and sallow in complexion. His sandy-coloured 
hair was already thinning. His eyes were a pale gingery brown and his teeth 
were twisted and discoloured. Hector could smell his breath from across the 
table.

‘Very well, gentlemen. Now please pay attention. My name is Hector Cross. I 
am the person who you tried to burn to death. My daughter is Catherine. She is 
still an infant. You also tried to kill her. Thus, I am not very well disposed 
towards either of you.’ He gave them a few seconds to digest that, and then 
he continued, ‘Like it or not, you are going to answer some questions. If you 
answer them truthfully you get ten Brownie points. If you tell me a porky pie 
you get your sore arm twisted.’ He smiled at the one with acne scars. ‘Do 
you know what a porky pie is, lover boy?’

‘A lie,’ the man mumbled. A little trickle of blood oozed from the corner 
of his mouth. He licked at it. His tongue was deeply gouged by his own teeth, 
swollen and turning blue.

‘That’s correct. Now, shall we play the game?’ He did not wait for a 
reply. He took the ends of the yellow cables from Paddy and Nastiya and held 
one in each hand.

‘First question is for you.’ He looked at the one with bad teeth. ‘Do you 
know that your breath stinks?’

‘It doesn’t stink.’

‘Wrong answer,’ Hector told him and yanked his cable. The broken bones in 
his elbow clicked like dice, and he screamed. He struggled wildly to break out 
of his bonds. At last he subsided, panting and sobbing.

Hector repeated the question quietly. ‘Let’s get it clear, does it stink or 
not?’

‘Yes! Yes! It stinks.’

‘Excellent. So I’m going to call you Spots, which is short for Leopard 
Breath.’ He turned to the other one. ‘Do you know that you have pimples?’

‘Yah. Okay. I got a few pimples.’

‘Beaucoup rather than just a few. Anyway that’s your new name. So tell me, 
Pimples. Where did you get the incendiary grenades?’

His dark eyes shifted. Hector raised his left hand holding the tag end of the 
cable.

‘Quickly,’ he warned.

‘The nigger gave them to me.’

‘Very interesting reply, even though it offends my political conscience.’ 
Hector smiled, and it was more menacing than any scowl. ‘Shall we rather 
refer to your grenade supplier as the Worthy African Gentleman, or WAG for 
short?’

‘Whatever.’ Pimples shrugged, and then winced at the pain the movement 
afforded him.

‘What was his name, this WAG?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Careful!’ Hector said, and showed him his end of the cable.

‘I swear on my mother’s grave. I don’t know his name. I didn’t ask and 
he didn’t tell.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘Someone I worked for one time before gave him my name.’

‘What kind of work did you do before? Was it wet work?’

‘Yeah, we snuffed an old guy who owed some money and didn’t pay. Kind of an 
example for others.’

‘What was the old guy’s name and where did you do him?’

‘His name was Charley Bean, I think, but I don’t remember the address; 
somewhere in Croydon.’ He twisted his head around to look across at his 
companion. ‘Where was it, Bonzo?’

‘Sixteen Pulson Street,’ Spots muttered.

‘The two of you are doing just fine.’ Hector applauded their performance. 
‘What did you use to dish Charley Bean? Knife, was it?’

‘Nah. Golf club.’

‘Where did you find a golf club?’

‘In a bag hanging behind his bedroom door.’

‘Wedge or five iron? How many strokes?’ Hector asked. Pimples looked blank.

‘Never mind. I was just having a little fun with you,’ Hector consoled him. 
‘Who gave you the contract on Charley Bean and put the WAG onto you?’

‘Can’t remember.’ Hector gave the yellow cable a firm tug, and Pimples 
howled and burst out in a fresh sweat.

‘Think!’ Hector encouraged him.

‘Bookmaker named Aaron Herbstein,’ he sobbed. ‘He runs a book on the dogs 
at Romford and Sunderland stadiums.’

‘Thank you, Pimples. How did Herbstein the bookie set up a rendezvous with 
you and your WAG?’

‘A runday what?’ Pimples looked bewildered.

‘A meeting. Where and how did you meet?’

‘We waited outside the tube station on Brixton Road at nine o’clock last 
Sunday morning and he came past in a car and picked us up.’

‘What car?’

‘A black Ford.’

‘Did you get the registration number?’

‘Didn’t bother.’

‘Why?’ Hector asked and Pimples shrugged.

‘It was nicked, wasn’t it?’

‘Of course it was. So you got in the back of this Ford and you looked at the 
driver. Tell me what you saw.’

‘I saw a black guy in a funny mask,’ Pimples said.

‘A Richard Nixon mask?’

‘Nah, it was a Dolly Parton mask.’

‘How did you know he was black?’

‘I was looking at the back of his neck. It was black, wasn’t it?’

‘What else did you notice about him?’

‘Well, he was a Muzzie.’

‘A Muzzie? What’s that?’

‘A Muslim. A Hadji.’

‘You could tell that by looking at the back of his neck?’

‘Nah, he had a Maalik tattoo.’

‘What is a Maalik?’

‘An Angel. A Muzzie Angel. They are a gang that call themselves Maaliks 
because they think they are the warriors of Allah, or some shit like that. They 
tattoo the sign on themselves and they think it makes them some kind of big 
deal. But they’re just a gang of street soldiers trying to make a little 
bread like the rest of us. Usually we fight them for territory. But this time 
we were doing business. This Maalik guy offered five K for us to torch a big 
old house in the sticks.’

‘My house,’ Hector said.

‘Sorry, guv. If I had only known I would have told him to stuff his five K 
really deep.’ Pimples hurried on. ‘I knew he was subcontracting to us. 
That’s what these shit-face Maaliks do. Someone offers them ten K for a job 
so they offer us the same job for five. They are shit, I tell you.’

‘So you agreed to take on the job?’

‘I wish I hadn’t,’ Pimples muttered ruefully. ‘I didn’t know about 
you and your daughter. But, after all, five K is still money. It buys a few 
tokes. This Maalik told me the house belonged to an old guy who couldn’t 
fight back for pussy.’

‘And, baby, look at you now.’ Hector gave the yellow cable a double jerk. 
Pimples wailed, his voice broke and he began to blubber.

‘Please stop. I am telling you everything. Please don’t do that again.’ 
Tears ran down his cheeks, weaving their way slowly between the pustules. He 
had no free hand to wipe them away and they dripped onto the front of his 
hoodie.

‘No, you haven’t told me everything yet, Pimples. Tell me more about this 
Maalik tattoo. Describe it to me.’

‘It was on the back of his left hand, about the size of a ten-pence coin. It 
looks like a worm crawling out of a lump of shit; all sort of twisted up. I 
think it’s some sort of Muzzie writing. Not all of them are allowed to wear 
it, only the top tomatoes in each chapter.’

‘What colour is the tattoo?’

‘Different colours for each chapter.’

‘Your man. The one who gave you five K. What colour was his mark?’

‘He’s American, isn’t he?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘For starters he talked with a Yankee accent. For seconds his tattoo is red. 
Bonzo and me checked on it before we took the contract. Red means the 
California chapter.’

‘What’s he doing over this side of the Atlantic?’

‘Dunno! Must be one of their Capo de Capos, like Robert de Niro in the 
flicks, or something.’

‘You don’t know his name?’ Hector insisted, and Pimples shook his head 
vehemently.

‘No! That’s all I know.’

‘Where is the five thousand pounds they gave you for the job?’

‘Not here, I ain’t got it here.’

‘I asked you where it is, not where it isn’t.’

‘Gave it to my girlfriend to keep for me.’

‘You’ve got a girlfriend? I can hardly applaud her taste in men. Anyway, 
this is her lucky day. She’s got five grand and she never has to look at your 
revolting face again. Why? Because if we don’t kill you, the boys in blue are 
going to lock you away for twenty or thirty years, maybe more. You know? Arson 
and multiple murders, innit,’ he said, imitating the man’s accent. ‘You 
gentlemen are in between a rock and a very hard place.’ They stared at him in 
dull resignation.

Hector turned to Nastiya. ‘They haven’t got much more to tell us that we 
need to hear. What do you think we should do with them, Nazzy my dear? As if I 
couldn’t guess.’

‘I think to kill them. Let me do the one with the pimples. He said some very 
bad things to me. I am still very, very cross.’

‘That should be a lot of fun to watch.’ Hector turned to Paddy. ‘What’s 
your vote?’

‘We haven’t got time to waste on this dungheap. Let’s do what Nazzy 
suggests and get on with it.’ Hector pretended to ponder the position. Both 
the captives watched his face anxiously. At last, Hector sighed.

‘It is definitely a most attractive proposition. But it would leave us with a 
lot of cleaning up. A brace of human carcasses is not easy to dispose of. I 
think we should be charitable and give them a little time to think it all over 
and repent their sins, something like twenty or thirty years enjoying the 
hospitality of Her Majesty. That should do the trick.’ He took out his phone 
and dialled 999. Two cars despatched from Winchester police headquarters 
arrived at the Hall within forty minutes.

The police officers were very polite and deferential towards Hector. They were 
well aware of his standing in the community, and of Hazel’s murder. They 
tried to smooth the whole arrest process, so as not to exacerbate the burden of 
his bereavement. Nonetheless, it was a long night. Firstly, Hector insisted on 
staying on at Brandon Hall until all his employees had been accounted for. It 
was after midnight before the firemen found the fourth and last corpse amongst 
the ashes.

It was Reynolds, the butler, who had been trapped by the flames in his own 
pantry. In the final moments before the smoke overwhelmed him he had covered 
his head with a fire blanket from the emergency kit. His face was only 
superficially scorched and still recognizable, but from the neck down he was a 
blackened and wizened stump of charcoal.

After the firemen zipped his corpse into a green body bag, Hector turned away 
and went to the Range Rover. They followed the police cars to Winchester to 
make their sworn statements.

The two prisoners were cautioned, charged and locked in the holding cells. Then 
Hector, Paddy, Nastiya and Paul Stowe were taken to separate interview rooms to 
make their statements.

This was a tedious chore, but they had rehearsed their version of events and it 
all went smoothly. Hector was even able to place on the record what the 
perpetrators had confessed to concerning the previous contract killing of a 
certain Charles Bean at 16 Pulson Street. The detective sergeant who was 
interviewing Hector excused himself and went back to the computer in his own 
office. He returned after only ten minutes or so. As he took the seat facing 
Hector again his expression was grim.

‘It ties in with Central Records. Same name and same address; fifth of March 
two years ago. Unsolved murder.’

In addition Nastiya handed over the flick knife she had captured, and testified 
as to how the accused had attacked her with it and how she had been obliged to 
defend herself by disarming him. The officer who was taking her testimony 
looked at her with an awed expression.

‘You did that to his wrist with only one kick?’

‘I was careful not to use undue force,’ Nastiya explained.

‘I meant that you are so small and he is so big!’ Few men were able to 
resist the little Russian when she batted her eyelids and assumed an attitude 
of childlike innocence.

*

It was two o’clock in the morning before they were able to leave the police 
station. None of them had eaten or slept for hours, but they were still driven 
by a surfeit of adrenalin. Hector stopped at the first McDonald’s along the 
road and brought back a large bag full of double cheeseburgers and cardboard 
beakers of coffee. Thus fortified, their conversation on the way home to No. 11 
was lively as they tried to make some sense of the two attacks on Hector and 
his family, and the part that the mysterious masked Californian gang leader had 
played in both assassination attempts.

‘It sounds as though he was the one driving the van. Obviously he is the next 
one up the chain of command. The two on the motorcycle who killed Hazel and now 
these two we put away tonight are merely grunts. They had no idea why they were 
doing what they did. They did not know who was giving the orders. They just 
followed them blindly. This in itself is significant,’ Hector postulated.

‘In what way?’ Paddy asked.

‘Okay; on their first attempt they had the drop on me. They might have taken 
me out pretty easily; but they passed up on the chance. They fenced me off from 
the action, or at least they tried to. Clearly, their orders were only to get 
Hazel. They weren’t interested in me. Why? Tell me why, will you? It worries 
me.’

‘It’s a tough one,’ Paddy admitted.

‘If they were acting logically I should have been the prime target, not 
Hazel. I killed the head of the clan, Khan Tippoo Tip. I also took out at least 
five of his sons, including Kamal and Adam, his favourites. I was the one who 
set up the Trojan Horse operation that destroyed their fleet of pirate boats. I 
should have been number one on their shopping list.’

‘Hazel was as responsible as you were; more so, even. She had the cheque 
book. You were simply her hired gun. What’s more, she was the one who 
actually pulled the trigger at Adam’s execution,’ Paddy pointed out.

‘That’s true,’ Hector countered. ‘But those yobbos never knew that. 
Even if they did, they should have taken both of us. Why were they after her 
exclusively?’

‘Hector is right, Muslaki.’ It always amused Hector when Nastiya called 
Paddy ‘Sugar Baby’. He was neither of those. ‘And what about last night? 
Who were they really after with their fire bombs? Hector or our little 
Catherine?’

‘You have married a pretty smart cookie,’ Hector remarked. ‘She’s 
absolutely right. Why did the Beast suddenly change its mind last night and 
decide that it wanted me after all?’

‘Why is it as soon as the newspapers blurt out about our Catherine they make 
another attack?’ Nastiya looked smug.

‘You are saying that last night they were after Catherine, and not Heck?’ 
Paddy’s tone was sceptical. ‘That doesn’t make sense to me. What could 
they possibly gain by torching a newly born infant?’

The argument lasted all the way back to London. They went round in circles; 
they picked nits and shot down one another’s theories, and at last agreed 
that none of it added up. The Beast had acted irrationally, and that in itself 
did not compute. The Beast never acted irrationally.

As they ran through the West End, Hector summed up. ‘All I am sure of is that 
we have to get Catherine out of England. Only when we have her tucked away on 
the top floor of Seascape Mansions in Abu Zara with a platoon of Paddy’s top 
men to watch over her will I be prepared to leave her.’

‘To go where and do what?’ Paddy demanded. ‘What are your plans, Heck?’

‘To go with Tariq Hakam to Mecca; to find this last remaining sprig of the 
Tippoo Tip clan; to capture him and take him to a safe place where I can 
question and evaluate him. Then, if I find him guilty, I will consign him to 
burn in the flames of hell from which he has sprung.’

It would not take more than a few days to pack up and prepare for the move to 
Abu Zara. Hector’s personal needs were easily catered for, not much more than 
a toothbrush and a change of underpants. Cross Bow Security had all the 
equipment he could possibly need for Phase Two of the operation stored in the 
Bannock Oil installation out in the desert a hundred miles south of Abu Zara 
City.

What concerned him most was what he knew least about: the supply train and 
logistics for the support of an infant. He called in his resident expert, 
Bonnie Hepworth. Despite the late hour, she answered his call with alacrity, 
and stood in front of his desk in her dressing gown, with an expectant 
expression not unlike a puppy waiting for a bone.

‘You want me, Mr Cross?’

‘I wanted to see you.’ Cautiously Hector modified her question. ‘Bonnie, 
do you know where Abu Zara is?’

‘Is that a hotel, Mr Cross?’

‘That wasn’t even close. Let’s try again. Do you know where the United 
Arab Emirates are?’

‘Well, sort of. I have heard of it, but I have never been there.’ She 
looked dubious. ‘Somewhere between Egypt and India, I think.’

‘Pretty close,’ he commended her. ‘Well, that’s where we are all going, 
you and Catherine also.’

‘Goodness! Working for you is such jolly good fun. One never knows what’s 
going to happen next.’

‘What is going to happen next is you are going to draw up a list of 
everything that you and Catherine might possibly need or want over the next six 
months. Bear in mind that antibiotics are not easy to obtain in the Emirates, 
so if you need a prescription for anything here is my GP’s card.’ He handed 
it over to her. ‘Order everything that you need, pack it and have it ready to 
go in three days from now.’ He paused and then went on. ‘Do you have a 
valid passport?’

‘Oh yes, sir. I went to Paris last Easter with some of the other girls from 
the hospital; I had to get one.’

‘Excellent. Don’t forget to pack that also.’ He knew that the two junior 
nursemaids already had travel documents. Hazel had made sure of that before she 
employed them.

He slid his black Harrods credit card across the desk to Bonnie. ‘Pay for 
everything with this. Have them deliver all of it here.’ She fled for the 
door, but he called her back. ‘I have decided that we are going to move 
Catherine into my bedroom until we leave for Abu Zara.’

‘Oh dear!’ Bonnie looked distraught. ‘Who will give her her bottle, and 
change her nappy?’

‘I will,’ Hector assured her.

‘I could stay with the two of you, just to help. I wouldn’t mind at all,’ 
she offered.

‘Thank you, Bonnie. But I am sure the two of us will be able to cope well 
enough on our own.’

Hector expected to find the self-appointed task of night-nurse onerous, but it 
turned out to be a delight rather than a chore. He adjusted the reading lamp on 
his bedside table to throw a soft light on Catherine’s face when he held her 
on his lap. As she sucked away at the teat of the bottle he revelled in the 
smell and the feel of her tiny body. He searched her face for vestiges of Hazel 
and was convinced that he found them in the shape of her mouth and the set of 
her little chin. Somehow it lessened his sense of loss and loneliness.

*

Know your enemy. Study him long and hard, and then strike him down with the 
speed and venom of a king cobra; that was Hector Cross’s principle of action.

Before sunrise the next morning Hector rose and showered. Then he donned a 
dressing gown and rang down to the nursery and called for Bonnie.

As he handed Catherine over to the nurse he told her, ‘I have arranged for 
Mrs O’Quinn to spend the day with you and Catherine.’ Nastiya had accepted 
the role of baby guard with a contented little smile. With Catherine in the 
care of these two women Hector could go about his other business without a 
qualm. ‘I will be going out for a while; however, Mr O’Quinn will be here 
to make certain that everything is safe and secure in my absence. You will have 
nothing to worry about.’

Still in his gown, he went down to his study. There was a big marble fireplace 
facing his desk, with a decorated frieze of five lion heads running just below 
the mantle. He pressed the central head and when he heard the muted click of 
the concealed mechanism he rotated it in a clockwise direction. There was 
another click and a pause, and then silently and smoothly the bookcase on one 
side of the fireplace rotated to reveal a narrow steel door beyond. He punched 
his password into the keypad of the electronic lock. The door swung open and he 
stepped into the small room beyond. Row upon row of open shelves climbed the 
facing wall from floor level to the ceiling. Each shelf held a tidy row of 
cardboard boxes, each box with a cryptic label describing the contents 
stencilled on its side. Most held weapons or other sensitive items; everything 
from knives and nightsticks to his favourite 9mm Beretta automatic pistol, with 
two hundred rounds of ammunition. Possession of nearly all these was strictly 
banned under British law. There was even a box marked ‘Passports’ which 
contained over thirty such documents from diverse countries with his photograph 
but with names ranging from Abraham to Zakariyya. He reached up to the top 
shelf and brought down the box marked ‘Arab costume’.

He left the other boxes undisturbed. He closed and relocked the door, and then 
he activated the mechanism to rotate the bookshelf back into place. He carried 
the cardboard box to his dressing room. He stripped down to his underwear and 
spent the next few minutes using a tube of make-up to subtly darken his already 
swarthy features to a Middle Eastern tone. His beard had grown out in a dense, 
dark stubble, which gave him a convincing Middle Eastern air.

He donned the full-length white dishdasha from the box and tied the keffiya 
round his head so that the tail of the scarf draped over his shoulders. He 
changed his platinum Rolex for a plain stainless-steel Seiko, slipped into a 
pair of open leather sandals, placed a pair of dark aviator glasses on his 
nose, and checked himself in the mirror.

You’ll do, he decided. His Arabic was fluent and colloquial. His inherent 
sense of Eastern mores and manners was impeccable. He could pass readily as a 
native-born Muslim either in relaxed social situations or when performing the 
traditional religious rituals.

He took his private lift down to the underground garage. One of the vehicles 
parked in the second row there was a small, slightly battered and 
neglected-looking saloon. Appearances were deliberately misleading. Hector had 
fitted it with tinted windows, racing suspension and a powerful new engine that 
was capable of a startling turn of speed. He used it on special occasions such 
as this when he did not want to draw attention to himself. He called it his 
Q-car, after the Q-ships that the Royal Navy used to lure the Nazi U-boats into 
range during World War II.

Hector started it up and for a few seconds listened with satisfaction to the 
deep growl of the engine, then drove up the ramp past the roller shutter doors 
into the street. It was a Friday so even this early the traffic was heavy and 
frenetic. Friday is also the day on which all Muslims have a sacred duty to 
attend prayers. He found a parking slot in Regent’s Park a few hundred metres 
from the great mosque. He left the car and headed towards it. There was a 
steady stream of the faithful hurrying in the same direction. They were all 
dressed in traditional garb. Hector was one of a multitude as he entered the 
precincts of the mosque. This was not his first visit so he knew his way around 
the building. He went firstly to sit with the other men on the long concrete 
bench, facing the row of taps, to perform the ablutions. He washed his hands 
and feet and then his face. He rinsed out his mouth.

It was well in advance of the appointed hour, but already the demarcated area 
of the prayer hall, the masjid, was crowded with row upon row of kneeling 
white-clad figures. However, there were still a few open slots nearer the rear. 
He knelt on the piled prayer rugs with his shoulders almost touching his 
neighbours on each side.

The prayers began and Hector entered into the lulling sequence of prostrations 
and responses. Hector was not an atheist; he had been close to death so many 
times as to know how fleeting and inconsequential life really is. He believed 
deeply that there had to be some controlling force behind the wondrous working 
of the universe, and the unfolding of infinity. In this respect he was a 
believer; however, he was not committed to any single creed. He wanted to be 
free to select the best from the doctrines of each of the faiths that attracted 
him and to adapt those to his own particular view of God and the universe. To 
him both Christianity and Islam were studded with priceless diamonds of beauty 
and truth. Many of these were identical. He valued both religions equally for 
that. He prayed now with complete sincerity, and he found himself praying 
especially for Hazel, wherever she had gone. He felt rejuvenated when the 
prayers came to an end.

He left the main precinct and wandered down the adjoining cloisters. He passed 
a few of the cubicles in which the temple mullahs waited to meet any members of 
the congregation who were seeking spiritual guidance and counsel. He found the 
man he was looking for near the end of the second colonnade, one whose eyes in 
a setting of fine wrinkles were sharp and intelligent and whose beard was white 
under the ginger dye. He had the look of permanence about him, as though he had 
been in place for a long time. Hector entered the cubicle and bowed.

‘As-salamu alaykum!’

‘And on you be peace!’

They exchanged greetings, then the mullah indicated the rug spread in front of 
his low table on which lay a well-thumbed copy of the Koran and other religious 
texts and commentaries. Hector sat cross-legged in front of him and they 
chatted informally for a while. The mullah recognized his accent almost at once.

‘You are from the East Africa, from Somalia, I suspect?’ Hector spread his 
hands in acquiescence. His Arabic had been honed by Tariq Hakam, who was from 
Puntland, and Hector had picked up the accent from him.

‘Is it so obvious, Sheikh?’ He used the term of respect. ‘I have lived in 
this country many years.’

The mullah smiled knowingly. ‘So how can I help you, my son?’

‘Father, I am planning to make the pilgrimage to Mecca soon. Inshallah!’

‘Mashallah! Let it be so,’ the old man intoned.

‘I have heard men speak of a mullah in that country who once preached in this 
very mosque where we now sit. People who have heard him have told me that, 
despite his youth, this mullah is a man of great holiness and wisdom. I want 
you to tell me if you knew this man when he was here, and if you believe the 
time and expense of extending my sojourn in Mecca to listen to him would be 
justified. I want to know also if what he preaches accords with the teachings 
of the Prophet Muhammad.’

‘My son, who is this mullah? Please tell me his name.’

‘His name is Aazim Muktar—’

Before Hector could complete the sentence the old man’s face lit with 
delight. He clapped his hands and exclaimed, ‘In the name of Allah and his 
blessed Prophet, may they be praised for ever. You speak of none other than 
Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip.’

Hector was surprised by the fervour of his reaction. ‘You know him?’ he 
asked.

‘I know him as I know one of my own sons, and verily I wish he were my own 
son.’

‘You admire him then, Old Father?’

‘It is as though Aazim Muktar has been touched by the hand of Gabriel, the 
chief of all the angels of Allah.’ The mullah lowered his voice reverently. 
‘He has been given the sight to see far beyond where other men can see. He 
has the wisdom to understand clearly what is hidden from others. His heart is 
filled with the love of Allah and with the love of his fellow man.’

‘Then you think I should take pains to hear him speak?’

‘If you miss that opportunity you will regret it to the end of your days. His 
voice is like the sounding of the finest musical instrument, like the sighing 
of the wind in the branches of the cedar trees on Mount Horeb, the one mountain 
of the one God.’

‘Describe his appearance to me, Old Father, that I might recognize him when 
first I see him.’

The mullah placed his fingertips together and pursed his lips as he considered 
the question, and then he began to speak. ‘He is tall but not overly tall. He 
is lean and he moves with the grace of a leopard. His brow is wide and deep. 
His beard is not yet touched with the frosting of age. He has a good nose, 
strong as the beak of an eagle. His gaze is keen but gentle and without guile. 
In short he is handsome but not pretty.’

Suddenly, and to Hector’s surprise, the mullah looked about in a 
conspiratorial manner, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘There are 
many who believe this man is the Mhadi; the Messiah who is prophesied to appear 
at the world’s end; the Redeemer who will establish a reign of peace and 
righteousness. Perhaps once you have listened to him you might agree with them. 
If so, when you return to London you must come to speak with me again.’

Hector stared at him. Slowly his vision of the way forward changed dramatically.

Nothing about this was as straightforward as he had at first imagined. It 
contained many layers and hidden depths.

*

That evening Hector, Paddy and Nastiya gathered in the sitting room before 
dinner. As usual the men were in mess kit with decorations while Nastiya had 
her diamond necklace nestling in the cleavage of her high tight bosoms, a 
sparkle in her eyes and colour in her cheeks. While Hector was pouring Dom 
Pérignon into a tall flute glass for her she announced, ‘Babies are 
wonderful. I truly never understood that before.’

‘All babies?’ Paddy teased her. ‘Or just one baby in particular?’

‘Don’t be silly. I know only one baby. She is wonderful. I fed her with a 
bottle today and I even changed her nappy. I never thought I would be able to 
do that, but her nurse showed me how. I thought it would make me want to throw 
up. But you know something? It hardly smells at all.’

‘Do you mind, my love! We are just about to enjoy one of Heck’s legendary 
dinners. Can we not find a more appropriate subject to discuss than baby 
droppings?’ Paddy protested and moved the conversation on hurriedly. ‘I 
spoke to Prince Mohammed this afternoon about the lease of the Seascape Mansion 
apartment. Of course Princey felt it necessary to tell me that he had another 
tenant interested and that there was a better price on the table. We did a bit 
of toing and froing but in the end I nudged him down ten per cent on his asking 
price, and we did a deal. The apartment is yours, Heck. The other good news is 
that there are only twelve other tenants in the entire building and they are 
all either members of the royal family or senior ministers of the Abu Zara 
government, or both. He claims that the security is airtight and waterproof.’

‘Can we take his word for that?’

‘No, Heck. We take nobody’s word for that. Immediately after I hung up on 
Princey, I called Dave Imbiss.’ Dave was Paddy’s right-hand man and the 
electronics expert at Cross Bow Security.

‘Dave has promised to go in with his team at first light tomorrow. They are 
going to sweep every last centimetre of the apartment for electronic bugs and 
any other nasty surprises that might have been left behind by somebody with 
evil in mind. Dave will install movement and pressure sensors with silent 
alarms, closed-circuit cameras, iris scanners and all the other 
state-of-the-art stuff. No living thing will be able to move on the top floor 
of Seascape Mansions, or anywhere in the rest of the building for that matter, 
without Dave being aware of it. By the time we arrive in Abu Zara the apartment 
will be a virtual electronic fortress.’ He accepted the glass of Jamesons 
whiskey that Hector offered him and took a swallow. He exhaled the fumes before 
he asked, ‘So what did you find up at Regent’s Park today to gladden our 
hearts?’

‘Very little for your comfort or mine, I am afraid. It seems that our target 
is a religious demagogue who has the power to whip up the emotions of his 
listeners with his impassioned oratory. Some, or most, of them think he is the 
Mhadi.’

They stared at Hector, their expressions concerned and alarmed. Paddy spoke for 
both of them: ‘In the name of all that’s holy, Heck! You don’t believe 
that bullshit, do you?’

‘It matters not at all what I believe, my dear Padraig. What is crucial is 
that there is a vast multitude who do believe. The coming of the Messiah is a 
common belief that runs through Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The only 
divergence is about who he will be and when he will come, or if has already 
come and gone. In this particular case Aazim Muktar has sequestered himself in 
the holiest religious site in Islam. The birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad 
himself, no less. The city is guarded by a great multitude of the faithful and 
devout. Only true believers in Islam are allowed to enter the city, under pain 
of death. It seems now that many of these also believe with fanatic intensity 
that Aazim Muktar is the Mahdi. They will protect him with their own lives. 
With their bare hands they will tear the arms and legs off whoever raises a 
finger to him.’

He paused and sipped at his own glass as he composed his thoughts.

‘What I originally had in mind was to go into Mecca disguised as a pilgrim 
and, concealed in the throng of worshippers, listen and watch Aazim. Then from 
what I saw and heard, I would evaluate the likelihood of him being the Beast 
who is perpetuating the blood feud. If he were patently innocent I would leave 
him there and seek out the true enemy. On the other hand, if there was any 
doubt at all in my mind as to his innocence we would snatch him and bring him 
out to stand trial before his accusers. Now we do not have the option of 
bringing him out. It would be just too chancy. That city is a death trap for 
the infidel. I must weigh up the odds against him being innocent, and if the 
balance swings against him then I must execute him on the spot and leave his 
corpse to rot in Mecca.’

‘If I were you, Hector, I would go straight in and cancel him out without all 
this fussing and soul searching, which I’d just like to say is not your usual 
style,’ Nastiya opined. ‘But I ask you with tears in my eyes, why take a 
chance? If you kill him and later it turns out he was the wrong man and he was 
innocent then it will be a great pity and we can all shed a tear for him or 
burn a candle, but at least it means that there are no more Tippoo Tips left in 
this world. That is not truly such a great loss, is it?’

‘Of course I agree with you, Flower of my Heart.’ Paddy smiled at her 
fondly. ‘But you know that sometimes Hector can be very silly and stubborn.’

‘He is a man.’ Nastiya shrugged and gave a sigh of resignation. ‘And all 
men can be very silly and stubborn.’

‘Nazzy, you know of the deep affection, nay, the deep veneration in which I 
hold you, but—’ Hector started, but she cut him off with a groan.

‘Spare me the bullshit, Hector Cross. Okay, so you want to play pussy foot? 
Good! Paddy and I go along with your decision, like always. But don’t blame 
us if this Great Redeemer turns round and bites you in the balls.’

*

It was another forty-eight hours before Hector was satisfied that they were 
ready to make the transfer from London to Abu Zara. After dark the baggage 
train comprising two large hired trucks was sent from the Belgravia house to 
Farnborough airport, where Bannock Oil’s Boeing jet was waiting to receive 
their cargo.

Hector and his guests dined in the comfort of home, and only after they had 
eaten did they change into comfortable travel attire. Hector returned to the 
secret room behind the bookshelf in his study. Firstly he took down the 9mm 
automatic pistol with two spare magazines and an additional hundred rounds of 
ammunition. He slipped the pistol into its quick-draw shoulder holster. He 
patted it and smiled. It felt good and comforting. Next he took down the box 
marked ‘Passports’ and from it chose three booklets of Saudi, Iraqi and Abu 
Zarian denomination. He closed and locked the secret room and went down to 
where the chauffeur had the Rolls waiting with engine running.





There was a bit of power play between Nastiya and Hector as to who would hold 
Catherine for the short run out to the airport. Nastiya played her trump with a 
snide remark regarding the fact that real English men never dandled infants. 
She sat up in front next to the chauffeur with the child on her lap and sang 
her soft Russian lullabies. Catherine emitted not a squeak for the entire 
duration of the journey. Bonnie and the other nursemaids followed the Rolls in 
a separate vehicle.

The convoy drove out onto the tarmac and parked under the wing of the Boeing 
Business Jet. There was a young Anglo-Indian woman from the UK Border Agency 
waiting on board who completed the immigration formalities with rapid 
efficiency and within minutes they were taxiing out onto the main runway. As 
soon as they were airborne Catherine was laid down to sleep in her cot by 
Nastiya with every other female on board in attendance.

When Nastiya returned to the lounge to join the men in a nightcap she curled 
catlike into the seat beside Paddy and vamped him extravagantly. ‘You know 
how I detest standing in airport queues, husband who I worship?’ she 
whispered in his ear. ‘So if you really love me you will buy one of these 
things.’

‘A Boeing Business Jet, right? They probably cost around two hundred million 
dollars. Do you still want one?’

‘I’ve changed my mind. You can take me to our cabin and prove your love for 
me some other way.’

*

A little over seven hours later they touched down in Abu Zara, where an airport 
tender met them on the runway and with flashing beacons led them to the Royal 
aircraft hangar. They parked alongside the Emir’s new 747–8. The lesser 
Boeings belonging to his wives were lined up behind the aircraft. Bannock Oil 
and anybody associated with the company enjoyed highly favoured status in Abu 
Zara.

There was a small reception committee from Cross Bow Security waiting to 
welcome them at the bottom of the boarding ladder. It was headed by Dave Imbiss 
and Tariq Hakam in the smart new tan uniforms that Nastiya had designed. Tariq 
was barely able to conceal his delight as he watched Hector coming lithely down 
the steps.

A long time ago, when Hector was still a major in the British Special Air 
Services, Tariq Hakam had been attached to Hector’s unit in Iraq as his 
interpreter and local guide. He and Hector had taken to each other from the 
first day when they ran into an ambush and had to fight their way out. Later he 
had been at Hector’s side on the dreadful day of the roadside bomb. When 
Hector opened up on the three Arab insurgents who had laid the bomb, and who 
seemed to be about to deploy a suicide device, Tariq had backed Hector’s fire 
and taken down one of the enemy. When Hector resigned his commission in the 
SAS, Tariq had come to him, and told him, ‘You are my father. Where you go I 
will go also.’ Now he stood at attention in front of Hector and bowed deeply, 
with his hands clasped over his heart. ‘May Allah love and protect you from 
all danger, My Father,’ he said softly in Arabic.

Against all protocol, Hector took him in a bear hug, and his voice choked a 
little as he replied in English. ‘Tariq, you old rogue you! God, how I have 
missed you.’

Having heard the salutation ‘You old rogue’ from Hector’s lips on so many 
occasions over the years, Tariq understood that it was one of the highest words 
of praise in the English language. He beamed with pleasure and returned 
Hector’s embrace, then he stepped back to let the other members of Cross Bow 
Security come forward to greet Hector. Hector knew all of them well. He had led 
some of them deep into Puntland to rescue Hazel’s elder daughter and, in the 
furnace of combat, strong links had been forged.

Now Dave Imbiss was second in command of Cross Bow under Paddy O’Quinn. Dave 
gave the illusion of youth and innocence, but he had served two tours of duty 
in the US Marines and had a row of medal ribbons on his chest to show for it. 
Back in the early days of Cross Bow, Hector, with his eye for a winner, had 
picked him out of the pack. Dave was shrewd and tough. What appeared to be 
puppy fat was in fact hard muscle. Dave had seen men die and had personally 
sent a number of them off on the long one-way trip. He and Hector owed each 
other a number of their nine lives. As they shook hands Hector demanded, ‘So 
is this safe house of yours really safe, Dave?’

‘Iron clad, boss.’

‘Don’t tell me, show me.’

All of them found seats in Dave’s sand-camouflaged Hummer and he drove them 
out of the airport complex into the open desert with the two trucks carrying 
the baggage following close behind. The road was four lanes wide, straight and 
glassy smooth. Like the ethereal city which loomed in the milky haze of 
distance far ahead, it had been built with the oil that lay far beneath the 
desert sands; the oil on which Hazel Bannock had staked her fortune and 
reputation when she stood at the helm of Bannock Oil.

Dave drove fast along the shore of the Gulf. The beach was white as 
sun-bleached bone and the waters beyond were a startling blend of blues and 
greens, changing as the seabed dropped away under them. The sky over it all was 
cloudless and a shade of blue so lustrous that it pained the eye.

The closer they came to Abu Zara City the higher the buildings seemed to climb 
into the sky; towers of creamy-coloured concrete and glass. Dave Imbiss pointed 
out one that stood well isolated from the others.

‘There it is! Seascape Mansions, little Catherine’s new fairy castle,’ he 
told Hector. He turned off the main highway at the next junction.

‘Pull over and park for a minute please, Dave,’ Hector instructed him. 
There was a pair of binoculars in the tray below the windscreen. ‘May I 
borrow these?’

‘Help yourself, Heck.’ As soon as the Hummer stopped, Hector stepped out 
and stretched over the engine compartment, focussing the binoculars on the 
towering building. He studied the external layout of the structure, and then 
swept the surroundings. The main building itself was encircled with extensive 
landscaped gardens; manicured lawns and fountains; stands of date palms and 
other exotic plants. The perimeter was guarded by a double palisade of razor 
wire. Beyond these gardens there was a separate complex of utility buildings 
and servants’ quarters discreetly tucked away in their own gated and guarded 
compound.

‘It looks okay from here,’ Hector admitted. He climbed back on board the 
Hummer and they drove down to the main gates of Seascape Mansions. The guards 
at the checkpoint were courteous but thorough. They even studied Catherine’s 
baby passport carefully. After they were admitted to the grounds Dave stopped 
again in the middle of the gardens and they all craned their necks to look up 
at the building. Dave pointed out to Hector the discreet steel baffles that his 
workmen had already placed over the windows of the topmost floor. These were 
designed to deflect any RPG or other explosive device fired from the grounds or 
the beach below. Hector had warned Dave about the incendiary grenades that the 
Beast had deployed at Brandon Hall, and he was taking no chances of a repeat 
performance.

There was another guard posted at the entrance to the underground car park. He 
checked the registration plates on the Hummer that had been phoned to him from 
the main gates. They rode up from the basement in the elevator dedicated 
exclusively to the top floor. When Hector stepped out of the elevator into the 
lobby of the apartment he saw at once why Prince Mohammed had come up with such 
an extravagant rental demand, and he realized that it had not been grossly 
inflated by wishful thinking.

There were a dozen house servants in white robes and scarlet fezzes with 
dangling black tassels drawn up in a file facing the doors to the elevator. 
They greeted Hector with respectful obeisance and then disappeared silently 
into the nether regions of the vast apartment.

‘I know what you are going to ask, boss,’ Dave Imbiss told him. ‘They 
have all been thoroughly checked and vetted. I personally vouch for every man 
jack of them.’

The interior décor of the apartment had been designed by a celebrated Italian 
studio. There were twelve bedroom suites, two dining rooms with their own 
kitchens, three lounges, a lavishly equipped gymnasium, two playrooms and a 
cinema. In addition, Dave Imbiss explained, there was accommodation for up to 
twenty-five servants provided in the separate gated compound.

Catherine had her own large nursery with an attendant nursemaid as her 
neighbour on either side, poised to rush to do her bidding at the first wail. 
On the roof there was a helipad, a swimming pool and a sun garden and 
entertainment area with bar and barbecue. There was a view across the bay to 
the centre of Abu Zara City. In the other direction lay the open waters of the 
Gulf with the white triangles of dhow sails scattered like daisy blossoms on 
the blue expanse.

‘If we must pig it, then I suppose this sty will just about do.’ Hector 
gave his opinion and called an immediate council of war in the cinema.

*

Hector set out his plan of action for Paddy and Nastiya, Dave Imbiss and Tariq. 
This was on a need-to-know basis; only those directly involved were briefed, 
not even the other senior and trusted Cross Bow operatives were involved.

The first stage of the operation was for Hector and Tariq in the guise of 
pilgrims to fly into Mecca on one of the many commercial flights. Tariq had 
already made the reservations, posing as an individual with no connection to 
Bannock Oil. He paid with Saudi riyals so he had left no credit-card traces. 
The two of them would fly directly from Dubai to Jeddah and from there take a 
public bus up to the sacred city itself. They were approaching the Islamic 
month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the high season of pilgrimage. During that period Mecca 
would be packed with hundreds of thousands of worshippers. Hector and Tariq 
would be swallowed up by the multitudes; hidden in plain sight.

Tariq had also taken the precaution of booking accommodation in one of the 
cheapest caravanserai in the city, where for under $20 a night they would be 
sharing a common dormitory with other pilgrims. The Beast would never suspect 
that Hector Cross would be holed up in a flea circus of that order.

These plans left Hector a little under three months to prepare himself before 
they left Abu Zara for the journey to Mecca. He knew his Arabic had become 
slightly stilted and rusty and would not convince a shrewd interrogator. The 
tanned skin of his face and arms had faded and the use of make-up would not 
withstand close scrutiny.

More importantly, his physical condition had deteriorated a little and he knew 
he was no longer battle fit. It was essential that he toughened himself up. 
Dave Imbiss and Tariq had planned to help him correct all these deficiencies.

Hector spent one night in the heady and rarefied luxury of Seascape Mansions. 
The next morning he kissed Catherine goodbye and he and Tariq went to join the 
labour force of a Saudi Arabian building contractor whose company was erecting 
yet another skyscraper on the Abu Zara beachfront.

The Abu Zara government had frowned upon the formation of trade unions in the 
emirate. The Emir in particular wished to dictate his own terms, and not to be 
beholden to his employees. With this example from on high, the foremen of 
Khidash Construction were not overly concerned with the rights of their 
labourers, human or otherwise.

The accommodation was primitive, the work brutal: sixteen to eighteen hours a 
day for seven days a week in the broiling sun, lugging sacks of concrete or 
crushed stone aggregate hundreds of feet up steep scaffolding, or working with 
pick and shovel in the deep foundations until their muscles burned and 
Hector’s face and arms turned a dark bronze from the sun. Their fellow 
workers were the dregs of humanity. Their social graces were totally devoid of 
couth. Their turn of phrase was colourful and colloquial. Hector soon regained 
his lost fluency. Stoically he endured three weeks on the Khidash site before 
he and Tariq moved a hundred miles south into the desert to the main Bannock 
Oil installation. Here they spent three or four hours a day on the firing 
range, honing their marksmanship with pistol and rifle.

With his contacts in the US military and his genius for weapons procurement, 
Dave Imbiss had located an M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System. Hector had pulled 
rank as a director to send the Bannock Oil jet to pick it up from the main US 
Marine base in Afghanistan. After only a few hours’ practice Hector was able 
to set up a line of half a dozen yellow tennis balls atop a sand dune. Hector 
reckoned that a tennis ball was a little smaller than a human brain, a fair 
target. From a measured range of three hundred and fifty metres he could 
explode every single one of the balls with six successive rapid-fire shots.

The M110 SASS, including its miraculously accurate optics, weighed only 
twenty-five pounds. Once it was broken down into its component parts it could 
be concealed effectively and carried by two men. Directly across the road from 
the mosque in Mecca where Aazim Muktar preached was a small public park, about 
two or three acres in extent. Tariq had reconnoitred an ideal stand in these 
gardens that overlooked the route the mullah took daily to walk from his home 
to the mosque and back. Tariq had paced out the range at 210 metres. Even on a 
moving target, that was a certain head-shot kill for Hector.

Of course, the most difficult part would be to smuggle the SASS into Mecca. 
Tariq had cultivated a contact in a transport company that, during the season 
of pilgrimage, carried thousands of tons of cargo every day from Jeddah airport 
into the city of Mecca. This was mostly in the form of perishable food items. 
However, Tariq was confident that he could get the sniper rifle through, once 
it was broken down into its separate parts. It could be labelled as spare parts 
for heavier machinery such as air conditioning or elevator units. Dave Imbiss 
was working closely with him on the project. He also had numerous contacts in 
Saudi Arabia who could be bribed or cajoled into assisting them. All this was 
merely long-range planning. There was plenty of time to work out a foolproof 
scheme. The final plan would only emerge after Hector had made the kill 
decision.

The last thirty days before they set out on the journey to Mecca were spent in 
the final toughening-up process that Hector had imposed upon himself and Tariq. 
Dave Imbiss sent one of his karate trainers out to the base. This creature was 
more machine than human. He took Hector to his limits and then pushed him even 
further, showing scant concern for either his rank or his status, nor for the 
fact that Hector was almost twice his age. In the end Hector earned his respect 
the hard way, teaching the young wolf to walk wide and wary of the leader of 
the pack.

Each evening, Hector had the helicopter fly the three of them out into the 
desert, in full battle gear. They parachuted to ground from low altitude and 
then ran twenty miles back to the base, still in full gear and lugging their 
parachutes.

In the beginning of the training it was harder for Hector than the two younger 
men. However, as he returned rapidly to his top form he began to revel in the 
brutal physical routine. He slept deeply and dreamlessly. The dreadful aching 
void left by Hazel began to close. At last he could remember her with joy 
rather than hopeless despair. He knew that he was going to avenge her death, 
and that maybe she would be able to rest more peaceably once he had 
accomplished that.

As his body regained its strength so too did his relationship with Tariq 
strengthen. The two of them were drawn as close as they had been many years 
ago. They had shared so much and together they had endured so much. They had 
stood shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield. Each of them had lost a beloved 
wife to the insensate cruelty of the Beast. Tariq’s wife Daliyah had been 
burned to death with her infant son in the ashes of their home. Shared tragedy 
was a strong bond between them.

Hector found that he was able to speak to Tariq about Hazel’s death as he 
could to nobody else, not even Paddy or Nastiya. Hazel had been with them on 
the expedition into Puntland to rescue her daughter Cayla from the fortress of 
Khan Tippoo Tip. Tariq had witnessed her courage and her physical stamina that 
matched that of even the toughest Cross Bow men. Tariq had developed a deep 
respect and admiration for Hazel. He wanted to know every detail of the ambush 
that the Beast had set for her. He listened intently while Hector explained how 
the attack had been carried out. At the end of Hector’s description Tariq 
inclined his head gravely and was silent for a while, gazing out across the 
desert from the top of the dune on which they were resting. Then he coughed, 
hawked and spat a yellow globule of phlegm. It hit the sand and rolled down the 
dune like a tiny ball of sand. They watched its progress in silence until it 
reached the foot of the dune, and then Tariq asked, ‘So, how did they know 
you were coming?’

The question took Hector by surprise. ‘The two swine on the motorcycle must 
have followed us when we left Harley Street. They probably called ahead to the 
masked truck driver,’ he explained.

‘Yes, I understand that; but how did the bikers know that you and Hazel would 
be with her doctor that morning? Who else knew that she had an appointment with 
him?’

Hector stared at him for a few seconds and then he swore softly.

‘Shit! You’re right. Nobody knew; except Hazel, her secretary and me.’

‘Can you trust the secretary?’

‘She has worked for Hazel for years. It couldn’t have been her. I would 
take strychnine on that!’

‘Somebody knew,’ Tariq said firmly. ‘It’s the only explanation for what 
happened.’

‘I haven’t been thinking straight.’ Hector’s face was grim. ‘Of 
course you are right. Somebody must have known. I should have jumped on that 
right away. Am I getting old, my friend?’

‘Not you, Hector. You had just been hit really hard by losing Hazel. When 
they killed my Daliyah and our baby I went mad as a rabid dog for almost a 
year. So I understand what happened to you. I have been there before you.’

‘When I get back to London, somebody is going to die the hard way,’ Hector 
said softly.

‘But before that, you and I have to go to Mecca to follow the blood trail 
that leads us there.’ He laid his hand on Hector’s arm. ‘One thing at a 
time. But in the end you will find the one who did this terrible thing to you. 
I know this in my heart. I would like to be with you when you find him.’

They sat in silence for a while and Hector thought about the bond between them 
that had grown strong as spun silk over the years, and he was reminded that the 
platonic love of one man for another is truly one of life’s nobler 
experiences.

Here is another person I can trust with my very life, he thought with utter 
certainty, and it helped him to endure.

*

Six days later when Hector and Tariq boarded the crowded flight from Dubai to 
Jeddah they were both in top physical condition and Hector’s skin was sun 
darkened and his beard black and curling. They were travelling light, carrying 
neither weapons nor any electronic gizmos, not even mobile phones. All they had 
with them were their return air tickets, their passports and a handful of 
crumpled and grubby banknotes in the money belt that each of them had strapped 
around his waist under the robes. Their basic toiletries and clothing were 
wrapped in small cloth bundles.

The aircraft was a pilgrim special: an ancient prop-engined Fokker operating 
out of a secondary domestic airport. The air conditioning was parlous and the 
odour of unwashed bodies in the cabin was eye-watering. The seats were narrow 
and unpadded. The legroom was so limited that Hector’s knees were forced up 
under his chin. The child in the row in front of him urinated on the floor 
during takeoff and the stream ran back under Hector’s feet. The flight lasted 
three hours that seemed like thirty.

After they had passed through immigration and airport formalities in Jeddah 
they waited for seven hours before they could find standing room on a public 
bus up to Mecca. The bus broke down twice before it reached the Sacred City 
well after midnight. The hotel that Tariq had arranged for them was far from 
the painted marble splendours in the central areas of the city. It was hidden 
away in a muddle of narrow twisting streets. They shared a common dormitory 
with twelve other pilgrims. Not even the sounds of snoring and farting could 
keep Hector awake for very long. The room was astir before sunrise.

Hector took his turn at the single squat-pan toilet, and afterwards washed 
himself with scoops of cold water in a tin dish that was chained to the base of 
the only tap. As soon as they had donned fresh robes they went down into the 
noisome and narrow street, carrying the meagre bundles of their possessions.

They ate a breakfast of heavily spiced flatbread at one of the roadside stalls, 
and then they trudged into the centre of the city.

The Saudi royal family ploughs billions of oil dollars into the glorification 
of this most holy place in Islam. In the middle of it stands a mighty 
agglomeration of marble and gold-leaf clad spires, domes, minarets, buildings 
and squares. All this surrounds the most venerated mosque in Islam, the Masjid 
al-Haram and the Kaaba shrine, which were first erected fourteen hundred years 
ago by the very hand of the Prophet. Every true Muslim faces towards these 
monuments when he prays five times a day.

However, there are hundreds of less revered mosques in Mecca alone, many of 
them dating back to pagan times. It was in one of these lesser mosques that 
Aazim Muktar preached. This was the Masjid Ibn Baaz, lying on the western edge 
of the Azeeziyyah district. It looked very modern from the outside, though 
Tariq assured Hector that it was over a thousand years old and was widely 
venerated for the number of famously holy men who had prayed and preached 
within its precincts.

They entered the public park across the street from the mosque. It was a few 
acres of bare and sun-parched ground, but already many hundreds of pilgrims had 
gathered here waiting to visit the mosque on the far side of the road to attend 
dhuhr, the noon prayers.

Tariq led Hector to the slightly elevated knoll in the centre of the park on 
which grew a thicket of thorny desert euphorbia. They squatted close together 
on the brown grass among the clusters of waiting worshippers. The two of them 
shared a parcel of hummus and falafel wrapped in a round of unleavened bread. 
Then they drank from the same litre bottle of cold milky tea that Tariq had 
bought at a roadside stall. Tariq carefully wiped the neck of the bottle on the 
hem of his robe before passing it to Hector.

While they ate, Tariq pointed out the killing ground that stretched out ahead 
of them and Hector assessed it with a marksman’s eye.

‘I thought that you and I could take our stance amongst those bushes,’ said 
Tariq. He turned his head and with his chin indicated the euphorbia plants. 
‘They are thick enough to conceal both of us and the weapon. In the early 
morning very few people come into these gardens. At about six a.m. Aazim Muktar 
leaves his home in its compound four hundred metres up the road.’ He pointed 
out the flat-roofed building to Hector. ‘He walks down the far side of the 
road with many of his disciples surrounding him.’

‘Will I be able to pick him out from amongst his followers? I certainly 
don’t want to waste the first steady shot on the wrong man.’

‘You will see him today. Once you have seen him you will never forget him. He 
stands out in any crowd,’ Tariq assured him.

‘It will be a moving target,’ Hector mused, but Tariq did not agree.

‘If you are patient, that need not be so. There are always petitioners 
waiting for him along the road there. They prostrate themselves in his path and 
beg for his blessing, others hold out their sick children for him to touch and 
cure. He turns none of them away, but stops for all of them. It will be a 
stationary target, impossible for a man like you to miss.’ Tariq looked back 
over his shoulder. ‘When Aazim Muktar goes down, there will be great 
confusion and pandemonium; you need only leave the rifle and walk away through 
the rear gate of the garden. There is a bus stop outside the gate, and always 
many tuk-tuks in the street waiting for fares. One of these will take you away 
from here very quickly.’

‘I can see that. The report of the shot should echo off those high buildings 
on the far side of the street. Nobody will be able to tell for certain the 
direction it came from. That will win me a good start for a clean getaway.’

‘Let us deal with one thing at a time. All this will only happen once you 
have seen and listened to Aazim Muktar today, and if you decide that he is the 
Beast that gave the order to kill Hazel.’ Tariq spoke very softly, for there 
were many strangers squatting within easy earshot of them.

‘Where is Aazim Muktar likely to be right now? You say he comes to the mosque 
every day in the early morning?’ Hector asked.

‘He comes every morning of every day at six o’clock, without fail. He 
remains there all day. He leads the prayers five times a day, as is laid down 
in the Second Pillar of Islam,’ Tariq explained. ‘He preaches twice a day; 
once after the dhuhr prayers at noon and then again after the isha prayers in 
the evening. Then at about nine o’clock in the evening he returns to his home 
and family. Many of his followers go with him.’

‘So he should be in the mosque right now?’

‘He is there, certainly.’ Tariq checked his wristwatch. ‘It is forty 
minutes from noon, so we are in good time. We can wait and rest here.’

The sun was warm and the murmur of the voices of the people crowded around them 
was lulling. Hector let himself doze off. Suddenly he jerked back awake. He was 
not certain how long he had slept and he looked around quickly. Tariq was gone. 
He felt a stab of anxiety, but then he saw him. Tariq was coming towards him, 
weaving his way through the clusters of other pilgrims scattered on the dusty 
earth.

‘Where have you been?’ Hector asked as Tariq squatted down beside him.

‘There.’ Tariq pointed out the public toilet at the entrance to the park. 
‘I went to make water.’

‘You should have told me.’ Hector was annoyed. They were in the den of the 
Beast. They were at risk. They should cover each other at all times, that was a 
basic principle.

‘I am sorry. You were sleeping.’ Tariq was hurt by the reprimand, but he 
deserved it. Hector reined back his irritation. Perhaps he was being too 
touchy. Besides which he was in equal blame; he shouldn’t have fallen asleep. 
Tariq sat down at his side and Hector touched his shoulder lightly, a gesture 
of reconciliation.

At last the high-pitched chanting of the muezzin reciting the adhan, the call 
to pray, rang out from the minaret of the mosque at the bottom of the hill. 
Tariq stood up immediately.

‘It is time for us to go down to pray,’ he said and there was an eager tone 
in his voice that he could not conceal. Hector rose with him and they joined 
the flood of men headed down towards the mosque. They left their sandals in the 
courtyard outside the main doors to the masjid and went to perform the 
ablutions with all the other worshippers. Then at last, barefooted and ritually 
cleansed, they walked with the multitude into the masjid and knelt side by side 
on a woollen prayer rug facing the direction of the Kaaba.

There was a palpable sense of expectation which seemed to grip every one of the 
kneeling congregation. It was almost as though every person present was holding 
his breath. When Mullah Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip entered the masjid Hector found 
himself exhaling and relaxing with all the others.

Tariq had spoken the truth. Hector was in no doubt whatsoever. He knew it was 
Aazim Muktar. The man had a presence that seemed to resonate through the great 
hall of the mosque. He emanated an internal force. Hector was not certain 
whether it was evil or benign, but it was powerful.

He was as he had been described to Hector: tall, lean and handsome, with strong 
almost ferocious features. This man could be a killer, Hector judged, but then 
again there was much else that cast doubt on that assumption. His mouth was 
generous but not soft. His gaze was searching and direct but not cruel. Hector 
realized almost at once that this man was an enigma.

Aazim Muktar mounted to the minbar, the pulpit that overlooked the 
congregation. He moved with grace; his body beneath the flowing robe was supple 
as that of some beautiful predator. When he called the congregation to pray his 
voice reached to every corner of the vast hall and echoed from the dome above 
them. Hector watched him with fascination as he led them through the ritual 
prostrations and devotions. He found himself riddled by uncertainty. At one 
moment he knew that this was the man he must kill, and then only seconds later 
doubts assailed him and eroded his determination. The waves of deep reverence 
that emanated from the worshippers that surrounded him coloured his judgement 
and swayed him back and forth like a river reed in a fitful breeze.

He knew it was not possible, but still he longed for an opportunity to confront 
this man face to face, to be able to peel back the layers which concealed his 
true identity, to reach down to his core and know for certain whether he was 
saint or demon. He realized that it would cheapen and belittle them both if he 
lay in ambuscade and shot him down from afar. He longed for proof positive, 
either that this was an enemy worthy of his steel or that he was a fine and 
honest man who deserved his respect.

The formal prayers ended. The worshippers rose from the final prostration and 
rocked back on their heels. A fresh tide of expectancy washed over their packed 
ranks and every one of their faces was raised to the imposing figure in the 
minbar above them.

Aazim Muktar sat before them. He raised his right hand and began to speak. The 
impelling and sonorous tones of his voice riveted them all, even Hector Cross 
the sceptic.

‘I wish to speak to you of the Law of Al-Qisas, the Law of Retaliation, as it 
was first set out in the Torah in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus and 
subsequently endorsed by the Prophet Muhammad in the fifth sura of the Koran.

‘Al-Qisas is the right of an injured party to claim a life for a life, an eye 
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn 
for a burn, a wound for a wound and a bruise for a bruise.’

Hector felt an arctic wind blow down his spine. Perhaps the text that Aazim had 
chosen was too close to his own intent to be purely coincidental. He was 
sitting well back in the crowded hall so he did not have a perfect view of the 
mullah’s face. He could read neither his expression nor the light in his eyes.

‘We know that this sura of the Koran was received by the Prophet directly 
from on high. We know that in the Hadith there are records of Muhammad putting 
into practice this aspect of Sharia law. In one instance when the aunt of Anas, 
one of his companions, broke the tooth of a serving maid and her family 
demanded recompense, Anas went to the Prophet and asked him to intervene. 
“Beloved Master,” he cried. “Surely she will not lose a tooth?” But 
Muhammad replied, “It is the law of Allah.’”

‘Inshallah!’ chorused the listeners.

‘However, is it the will of Allah and his Prophet that we should conceal our 
lust for vengeance in the cloak of divine law?’ Aazim Muktar demanded 
remorselessly. ‘Is that why Allah the All Seeing, the All Powerful, had 
offered us a second choice? That is blood wit or Al-Qisas. The victim may 
choose to accept payment in cash or kind to discharge the offender’s guilt. 
No blood need be spilled. Death need not be paid for by death, and the wrath of 
Allah is appeased.’

‘Mashallah!’ the congregation rejoiced.

‘However, is greed a nobler motive than revenge? There are some that would 
say this is not the case. Once again Allah has offered us a third course of 
action. That choice is forgiveness.’

‘Allahu Akbar! God is great!’ They called out to heaven.

‘Yet again, if we forgive the murderer, is it justice that he should walk 
away from his crime, perhaps to murder again? What nobility of mind is required 
for a man to let the killer of his beloved wife survive?’

‘No! He must die,’ they shouted out angrily. Skilfully Aazim Muktar was 
toying with them in the Socratic elenctic style, refuting argument by proving 
the error of its conclusion. Hector could only admire his subtlety.

‘Then if the murderer is killed, will his brother have the right to revenge 
him also? Will he return and murder the dead woman’s son? Does this not 
plunge mankind into a vicious circle of death begetting death?’

The congregation fell to muttering amongst themselves, confused and uncertain. 
Aazim Muktar let them wrestle with their own consciences for a while, before he 
took pity on them.

‘Is it possible that each new age finds its own morality? Perhaps what was 
right and just fifteen hundred years ago is no longer so today.’ He held up 
both hands and went on in a lighter and more joyous tone. ‘It is one of the 
precepts of not only the Holy Koran, but of the Jewish Torah and the Christian 
Bible as well, that in the end days before the world that we know perishes and 
is gone for ever the Redeemer will be sent down to us by God. The Koran tells 
us that he will reign over us for nine years in a time of peace and love and 
righteousness when there will be no more cruelty and evil, and wrongdoing will 
vanish from the face of earth.’

‘Inshallah!’

‘There are many who believe that this blessed time of forgiveness and 
righteousness has come and the Redeemer is already amongst us.’

‘Allahu Akbar!’

Aazim rose to his feet and made a sign of blessing over them and then he 
descended to the marble floor, and disappeared through the door behind the 
minbar.

The worshippers rose to their feet and moved towards the exit doors. Their 
collective mood was buoyant. They were excited and obviously moved by all they 
had heard. They were so densely packed that Hector was carried along bodily by 
the throng. The closer they came to the exit doors the more tightly Hector was 
hemmed in. The men closest to him were all big and tall, many of them as tall 
as Hector himself. It was almost as though they had been chosen for these 
attributes.

He looked around for Tariq but could not see him. He must have been carried 
away in the flood of humanity. Hector was not particularly concerned. He knew 
that he and Tariq would find each other in the courtyard beyond the doors. 
However, by now he could hardly breathe and the press of bodies around him was 
solid. The face of the man on his right side was only inches from his, and his 
lips were almost touching Hector’s ear.

‘Effendi,’ he said quietly, and Hector started at the use of the Arabic 
term of respect. ‘Please do not be alarmed. We mean you no harm and you are 
in no danger. However, I must insist that you are to come with us, please.’ 
His use of the plural instantly clarified Hector’s situation for him. It must 
be that all the men surrounding him were working together. He estimated that 
there were twenty of them at the very least. He was their prisoner just as 
certainly as if he already wore manacles and leg irons. He tried to judge the 
odds set against him. He might take down two, three or even ten of them, but in 
the end their numbers would be decisive. Even if he managed to break free of 
the pack, he would not have any idea of the escape route from the unfamiliar 
maze of the mosque. He was unarmed in a strange city in a foreign land. The 
hand of every man would be turned against him. He knew he would not get very 
far. This was not the time to take it on the run. He must bide his chance until 
the odds turned more favourably towards him.

‘Where are you taking me?’ It was a fatuous question, but he asked it to 
buy time. He was thinking quickly. Where the hell was Tariq? Tariq was his best 
chance. Tariq was resourceful and brave. Tariq was on familiar ground. Most of 
all, Tariq was loyal and devoted.

‘The Mullah Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip wants you to know that it is of the 
utmost importance that you visit him as his honoured guest. He wishes to speak 
with you. He has ordered us to bring you to his home.’

‘I think you are mistaking me for somebody else,’ Hector protested.

‘There is no mistake, effendi. We know who you are.’ Hector lapsed into 
silence; as a form of defence it was a last futile effort. He had to hope that 
Tariq had realized the predicament they were in and he could work out some sort 
of solution.

Then he heard one of the men close behind him warn his companions quietly, 
‘Take care. He may be armed.’

‘No. They were both unarmed.’ The reply from one of the other Arabs was 
confident, containing not a shadow of doubt.

Hector was stunned as the full purport of that simple statement dawned upon 
him. The man had used the plural, which meant Tariq and himself. Only Tariq 
knew they were both unarmed, which meant Tariq had told them.

Tariq! It was a silent scream of despair from the depths of his soul. Tariq has 
spoken to them. He has helped them set me up. Tariq is a traitor. He stopped 
dead in his tracks. Immediately he was thrust forward again, not brutally but 
firmly. His captors closed up even more tightly around him.

When did he do it? He was with me at all times, when? Then he remembered. Tariq 
had left him while he was asleep. Traitor! He has fed me to the Beast.

He knew then with utter certainty that he was going to kill Tariq; Tariq who 
once he had loved like a brother. Tariq was going to die and the thought 
sustained him. Now he was coldly determined. He was going to kill them, Tariq 
and Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip both. If he died with them he would welcome it, for 
there was nothing left in this world he could truly believe in.

*

They left the mosque through the main gate and turned up the road towards the 
walled residential compound that Tariq had pointed out to him earlier as the 
home of Aazim Muktar. They moved swiftly, with almost military precision, in a 
tight-packed ruck with Hector in their midst. When they reached the gates of 
the compound they were opened from within and they marched through into a paved 
courtyard. In the centre of it grew a large banyan tree with spreading 
branches. In its shade sat a small group of veiled women and young children. 
They looked on with interest as Hector was marched to the set of steps that led 
up to the veranda of a flat-roofed bungalow.

It was a modest and unpretentious building, not the home that one might expect 
belonged to a high-ranking cleric or important government functionary. Most of 
Hector’s escort stopped at the bottom of the stairs, but two of them flanked 
him and took hold of his arms from either side to lead him up the steps onto 
the veranda. Hector shrugged their hands away irritably, and they did not 
insist. He went up the stairs two at a time and paused as he reached the porch. 
The door facing him was open and he crossed to it with long determined strides 
and paused in the doorway while his eyes adjusted to the gloomy interior after 
the brilliant sunlight of the courtyard.

The room was large but sparsely furnished in Arabic style. The furniture was 
aligned with the walls and the centre of the room was left bare and 
uncluttered. Aazim Muktar was the only person in the room. He was seated 
cross-legged on a pile of green velvet cushions, before a low table. He rose to 
his feet in one lithe movement and bowed as he touched his forehead, lips and 
heart. Then he straightened up and spoke quietly.

‘You are very welcome in my home, Mr Cross.’

‘It is very kind of you to invite me, Sheikh Tippoo Tip.’ Hector returned 
his bow, and Aazim Muktar grimaced slightly at his ironical tone.

‘It might be best if we speak freely and openly, Mr Cross. I do not wish to 
detain you longer than is absolutely necessary.’ His English was perfect, 
educated and cultivated as that of any high-born Englishman.

‘I would expect nothing less from you, Mullah Aazim Muktar.’

‘Please be seated, sir.’ He indicated a high-backed chair that had 
obviously been prepared for Hector. Hector went to it without hesitation and 
sat down. He was at a severe disadvantage, so it was essential that he 
maintained a hard expression and a stern resolve.

Aazim Muktar sat facing him, cross-legged on his cushions. They regarded each 
other steadily, until Aazim Muktar broke the silence.

‘Did you know that I met your wife some years ago at a reception in the 
London residence of the American ambassador? Hazel Bannock-Cross was a very 
beautiful and superior lady. I liked and admired her immensely.’

Hector took a long slow breath. He did not want his voice to shake with the 
rage that flooded every cell in his body. When he replied it was in a low and 
level tone.

‘So why, then, did you have her murdered?’

Aazim Muktar’s eyes were dark and expressive. His lashes were long and almost 
feminine, incongruous when set in such powerful masculine features. Slowly they 
filled with stark shadows of pain and sorrow. He leaned towards Hector and for 
a moment it seemed he might reach out and touch him, but he restrained himself. 
He sat upright again and held Hector’s angry gaze.

‘I call on Allah and his Prophet to hear me when I tell you that is not true, 
sir. I was not involved in any way in the murder of your wife.’

‘And I tell you, sir, that words trip glibly across the tongue of one who 
deals in them.’

‘Is there no way I can convince you?’ he asked quietly. ‘I grieve for her 
almost as deeply as you do.’

‘I cannot imagine anything that might convince me of that,’ Hector told 
him. ‘There is nobody else who had any motive, except you. The creed of 
retaliation and revenge killing is deeply embedded in your religion, your 
culture and your psyche.’

‘That is not true, Mr Cross. There is also the light of forgiveness that 
leads us on. Did you take no account of the plea that I addressed to you 
personally in the mosque today? I pleaded with you to call a halt to this 
vicious circle of kill and kill again.’

‘I heard what you said,’ Hector replied, ‘but I did not believe a word of 
it.’

‘It seems I am left with only one other recourse.’

‘What is that? Are you going to kill me also?’

‘No, sir. I did not kill your lovely wife and I am not going to kill you. You 
are a guest in my home. You are under my protection. Will you bear with me for 
just a short while, Mr Cross?’ Hector did not reply and Aazim Muktar stood up 
and left the room. Hector jumped up from the chair and moved quickly around the 
room. His eyes darted from side to side searching for an escape route, seeking 
a weapon with which to defend himself. He found nothing except books and 
scrolls, and when he glanced through the window he saw that the courtyard was 
still filled with Aazim Muktar’s followers. He was trapped helplessly.

Within minutes the mullah returned. ‘Forgive me, Mr Cross, but I had to make 
the final arrangements to get you out of the city. You may not know that it is 
a very serious offence for any person who is not of the Islamic faith to enter 
the holy places of Medina and Mecca. The penalty is death by beheading. I have 
a car and driver waiting at the gates of the compound to drive you down to the 
airport at Jeddah. I have made a reservation in the first-class section of an 
Emirates flight from Jeddah to Abu Zara which departs at ten p.m. this evening. 
Once you are airborne your people at Cross Bow Security will be alerted to your 
arrival. However, you must leave Mecca at once.’

Hector stared at him in astonishment and total disbelief. They were not going 
to set him free. This was another ruse, he knew that. He tried to see beyond 
the mullah’s open gaze and his sincere expression.

‘Please, Mr Cross. This is a matter of life and death. You must leave at 
once. I will follow you in a separate vehicle. We will have another opportunity 
to talk at Jeddah airport, in a VIP room that I have reserved.’

Hector inclined his head slightly, feigning acquiescence. He knew that the 
driver would take him out into the desert where there would be an execution 
squad of religious zealots waiting to receive him. They had probably already 
dug his grave.

No matter how heavy the odds this devious bastard has stacked up against me, my 
chances are better out there in the desert than bottled up here, he decided.

‘You are very generous—’ he began, but Aazim Muktar cut him short.

‘Here is your air ticket.’ He handed Hector an envelope with an Emirates 
crest stamped on the flap. Hector opened the envelope and checked the name on 
the ticket. It was the same as the false name in the Abu Zarian passport on 
which he was travelling. Of course, Tariq the traitor had given them that 
information.

Hector looked up. ‘This seems to be in order.’

‘Good! Now go, at once. I will meet you again in Jeddah.’ He held the door 
open and Hector crossed to it and ran down the steps into the courtyard. 
Immediately a black Mercedes saloon drove in through the gate from the street. 
It parked in front of Hector. A bearded chauffeur in a black turban jumped out 
of the driver’s seat and opened the rear passenger door for him. As soon as 
Hector had settled himself into the seat the chauffeur slammed the door and 
slipped back behind the wheel. The ranks of the disciples opened to allow the 
Mercedes through and they drove out through the gates of the compound into the 
street. Hector looked back through the rear window. Aazim Muktar was standing 
on the veranda of the bungalow and watching him leave.

Hector spent the entire journey down to Jeddah airport in a turmoil of 
indecision. It would have been so easy to reach over the back of the seat, take 
the chauffeur in a head lock and break his neck. Then he could take the 
Mercedes and make a run for the Abu Zarian border. However, that was over a 
thousand miles away and the fuel gauge on the dashboard of the Mercedes was 
indicating under half full. He did not have more than a few dollars with him, 
certainly not enough to refill the tank. The chauffeur might be carrying cash, 
but he doubted it. The man probably had a fuel card or some other type of debit 
card. Without cash he would never make it. Of course, once the alarm went out 
the Saudi police would have an APB on every road. He wouldn’t go a hundred 
miles, let alone a thousand, before they had him. He abandoned that idea.

Then he thought about Aazim Muktar Tippoo Tip, and weighed the chance of his 
innocence against that of his guilt; could he believe and trust him? When he 
had listened to him speak in the mosque he had almost been convinced. But 
conversely, now that he had been set free Hector was certain that it had to be 
trickery. He knew that there had to be another shock in store for him.

There was a telephone in the rear armrest of the Mercedes and he picked up the 
receiver and held it to his ear. There was a dialling tone. He opened the 
envelope that Aazim Muktar had given him and found the phone number of Emirates 
checkin desk at Jeddah airport. He dialled it and a woman answered on the third 
ring. He gave her his ticket details.

‘Can you confirm that my booking is correct, please?’

‘Hold on please, sir.’ There was a short delay and then she came back. 
‘Yes, sir. We are expecting you. You have already been checked in online. 
Your flight is running to schedule. Departure is at twenty-two hundred hours.’

He replaced the receiver in its cradle. It all added up neatly, perhaps too 
neatly. What finally decided him was the thought of Hazel. He owed it to her 
memory to confront Aazim Muktar and see it through to the end, no matter what 
risk that involved. He could almost hear her voice. You have to do it, my 
darling. You have to do it or you and I will never be able to rest again.

So he sat in the back seat and let the chauffeur drive him down to Jeddah.

*

At the first-class entrance to the UAE Airlines terminal at Jeddah airport a 
doorman in traditional robes opened the door of the Mercedes for him and with 
elaborate respect escorted him to the private room that had been reserved in 
his name. As soon as he was alone Hector tried the door and found it unlocked. 
He opened it an inch and glanced out through the crack. There was no guard 
outside. By now he was more intrigued than fearful. He closed the door and 
looked around the luxuriously furnished waiting room. His mouth was parched by 
the rancid taste of danger.

I would give my virginity for a decent Scotch, he decided, but of course there 
was no hard liquor on display in this Islamic stronghold. He drank a glass of 
Perrier water, poured another and carried it to one of the leather easy chairs. 
As he settled into it there was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ he called and Aazim Muktar entered. He must have followed 
Hector’s Mercedes closely on the journey down from Mecca. However, Hector was 
astonished when the mullah was followed by a heavily veiled woman. She was 
weeping softly behind the veil. She led by the hand a brown-skinned lad aged 
six or seven years. He was a lovely little fellow, with curling black locks and 
huge dark eyes. He was sucking his thumb, looking unhappy and perplexed. Aazim 
Muktar gestured at the woman and she scurried to a corner of the room and 
squatted on the floor, hugging the child to her breast. Hector saw the glint of 
her eyes behind the burqa as she studied him, and then she began to sob again. 
Aazim Muktar cautioned her to silence with a sharp word, then he seated himself 
in the easy chair facing Hector.

‘They will be calling your flight for boarding in forty-five minutes,’ he 
said to Hector. ‘That is all the time I have to convince you that I was not 
responsible in any way for the assassination of your wife. But first let me say 
that I know almost every detail of the tragic involvement of your family and 
mine. There were many deaths on both sides. I accept that you were a serving 
army officer and on occasion you were justified in killing in the line of your 
duty. But that was not always the case. There were times when you took the law 
into your own hands.’ He paused and looked keenly into Hector’s eyes.

‘Go on!’ Hector invited him expressionlessly.

‘I accept the fact that my father and most of my brothers were pirates, 
acting in direct contravention of international law. They seized merchant ships 
on the high seas and held the crews to ransom. As a very young man I 
disassociated myself from these crimes committed by my family and I went to 
England to be as far as was possible from them. I have never considered that I 
had any right of retaliation against you or your family. I have told you that I 
met your wife and admired her. I was utterly devastated when I heard of her 
murder. It was against all the laws of man and God. However, I knew that after 
her death you would hunt me down to appease the sins of my clan.’

‘You have my full attention.’

‘I have dreaded this day of our meeting, but I have planned for it.’

‘I am sure you have,’ Hector retorted, and now his expression was grim.

‘Not in your way, for you are a hard warrior, Mr Cross, and yours is the way 
of the sword.’

‘Tell me then, Mullah Tippoo Tip. What is your way?’

‘My way is the way of Allah. My way is mutual forgiveness. My way is 
Al-Qisas. I offer you a life for a life.’ He stood up and went to the little 
huddle of abject humanity that cowered in the corner of the room. He took the 
child’s hand and led him to stand in front of Hector.

‘This is my son. He is six years old. His name is Kurrum, which means 
happiness.’ The little boy thrust his thumb back into his mouth and stared at 
Hector.

‘He is a beautiful boy,’ Hector conceded.

‘He is yours,’ Aazim Muktar said in Arabic, and he pushed the child gently 
forward.

Hector jumped up from his chair in consternation. ‘In God’s name, what must 
I do with him?’

‘In Allah’s name, you must take him and hold him as a hostage against my 
good faith. If you find irrefutable proof that I killed your wife you must kill 
him as is your right in terms of the law of Al-Qisas, and I shall forgive 
you.’

The woman screamed and threw herself across the floor.

‘He is my son. He is my only son. Kill me if you must, effendi. But do not 
kill my son.’ She tore off her veil and clawed at her own face, raking both 
her cheeks with her long nails. The blood welled from the long wounds and 
dripped from her chin. She crawled to Hector’s feet. ‘Kill me, but let my 
son live, I implore you.’

‘Be silent, wife.’ Her husband used a kindly tone. He placed a hand on her 
shoulder and drew her away. Then he came back to face Hector. From the folds of 
his white robe he drew out a leather wallet, and proffered it.

‘This is all the documentation you need in order to take Kurrum with you: his 
air ticket on today’s flight, his certificate of birth, his passport and the 
papers that name you as his legal guardian. What is your decision, Mr Cross?’

Still Hector stood dumbstruck. This was the very last thing he had expected. He 
looked down at the child. He shook his head, as if to deny what was happening. 
He reached out and touched the boy’s head. His curls were crisp and springing 
under his fingers. Kurrum made no attempt to pull away. He lifted his head and 
looked at Hector. His eyes were dark and wise far beyond his years. He spoke 
softly. ‘My father says I must go with you, effendi. My father says I am now 
a man and I must behave like a man. It is the will of Allah.’

Still Hector could not speak. His throat was dry and the pulse beating in his 
temples echoed through his skull like a drum. He stooped and picked up the 
child and held him on his hip. Kurrum did not struggle. Hector touched his 
cheek. Hector turned his head and looked back at the boy’s father.

At last he was able to see through to his very core, and what he saw there was 
good. He knew at last with certainty that this man was not the Beast he was 
hunting.

Hector turned back to the child on his hip. ‘You are my hostage, Kurrum.’ 
His mother heard him. She moaned. Hector ignored her and went on addressing the 
child. ‘Do you know what that means, Kurrum?’

The boy shook his head, and Hector went on. ‘It means you are brave and good, 
as your father is brave and good.’ He replaced Kurrum on his feet, turned him 
towards his mother and gave him a gentle push. ‘Go back to your mother, 
Kurrum, and take good care of her, for now you are a man as your father was a 
man before you.’

The woman held out both arms to him, and Kurrum ran into them. She swept him up 
and turned for the door. She paused when she reached it and looked back at 
Hector with tears and blood from the scratches streaming down her face.

‘Master…’ she started and then her voice failed.

‘Go!’ Hector ordered her. ‘Take your son, and go with Allah.’ She went 
and closed the door softly behind her. She left Hector and Aazim Muktar facing 
each other across the room.

‘Are you sure?’ Aazim asked.

‘I am as sure as I have ever been of anything in my life.’

‘There are no words that can express the extent of my gratitude.’ Aazim 
bowed. ‘You have given me a gift beyond any other I can imagine. I can never 
repay you.’

‘I am paid in full. Simply knowing a man of your sanctity has enriched my own 
life.’

‘I am still in your debt. My son’s life outweighs all else,’ Aazim told 
him sincerely. ‘I understand that you actually saw the man who murdered your 
wife, and that he wore a gang tattoo.’

‘Tariq Hakam told you that!’ Hector’s fury flared again. ‘That man is a 
traitor. He betrayed my friendship. One day I will kill him.’

‘No, Mr Cross. He is not your enemy.’ Hector shook his head adamantly, but 
Aazim held up a hand to restrain him. ‘One day you will realize that. Tariq 
Hakam asked me to give you a message. I promised to do so. May I tell you what 
he said?’

‘If you wish.’

‘He says that there was no other way to persuade you that you were looking in 
the wrong direction for your enemy. He said that you and I had to meet to 
understand each other.’

‘I will never take him back, no matter what he says. I can never trust him 
again.’

‘Tariq knows that.’

‘What will he do now?’

‘He is determined to turn aside from the warrior way. From now onwards he 
will follow the road that leads to the feet of Allah.’

‘So, he has discovered God and become one of your disciples, has he? Good for 
him, the old rogue.’

‘Old rogue. He told me that you would say that.’ Aazim smiled. 
‘However—’

He broke off as he was interrupted by a woman’s voice echoing over the 
airport’s public address system. This is a final call for all passengers 
travelling on Emirates Flight EK 805 to Abu Zara. This flight is closing at 
Gate A26. Passengers must proceed at once to Gate A26 for immediate boarding.

‘Our time together has come to an end, Mr Cross. When I lived in London I 
worked with a man there who devotes his life to helping rehabilitate young 
Muslim boys who had been caught up in the criminal street gangs of the UK’s 
major cities. I will send a message to him to contact you. Perhaps he will be 
able to help you trace this killer with the Maalik tattoo. Perhaps that way you 
might be able to identify with certainty your hidden enemy.’

‘How will you send this man of yours to me, Aazim Tippoo Tip? You do not know 
where I live.’

‘Since Brandon Hall was burnt to the ground you have made your principal 
London home at Number Eleven, Conrad Road in Belgravia. Your primary email 
address is cross@xxxxxxxxxxxx, but you have many others. Is that not correct, 
Mr Cross?’

Hector inclined his head in wry acquiescence. ‘Tariq has told you so much 
about me. It would not surprise me if you even know my shoe size.’

‘US size eleven and a half,’ Aazim replied without smiling, but Hector 
laughed out loud.

‘Goodbye, Aazim Tippoo Tip. I shall never forget you.’

‘Nor I you, Mr Hector Cross. May I shake your hand?’

Hector took his hand and they looked into each other’s eyes.

‘Go with Allah, Mr Hector Cross.’

‘Pray for me, Sheikh Tippoo Tip.’ Hector turned and without looking back 
strode out through the door, headed towards Gate A26.

*

Although it was after midnight when Hector arrived back at the penthouse of 
Seascape Mansions in Abu Zara, he called a council of war in the private cinema.

As the team assembled they greeted Hector enthusiastically but then looked 
around for Tariq Hakam. Hector made no effort to allay their curiosity until 
they were all seated on the tiers of seats facing him on the podium.

‘So where is Tariq, then?’ Nastiya asked the question for all of them.

‘It’s a long story,’ Hector hedged.

‘Okay. Then make it a short one,’ Nastiya suggested.

‘He is still in Mecca.’ Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Hector was forced to 
continue. He made it short and he stripped away all detail and commentary. The 
tension in the room rose steadily as he spoke. He told them everything except 
the final parting at Jeddah airport and Aazim’s offer of a hostage. When he 
finished they all stared at him in grim silence. Nastiya broke the spell of 
their collective horror. She was the only one in the room who was not afraid of 
Hector Cross.

‘So Tariq Hakam was the traitor all along. He betrayed you and he betrayed 
all of us. Why did you not kill him, Hector?’

Hector had prepared for this interrogation on the flight back from Mecca. They 
hammered at him with their questions and their doubts for almost another thirty 
minutes. He described in detail Aazim Muktar’s sermon in the mosque, 
repeating it almost word for word.

‘And you believed him, did you, Hector?’

‘He was very convincing. But I did not truly, deeply, believe him. Not then. 
Not until he offered me his six-year-old son as a hostage. Then I believed him. 
He bared his soul to me and gave me his son. Then I knew he was on the side of 
the angels. I knew that he had not masterminded Hazel’s murder.’

‘If he gave you this hostage, Hector, then where is the boy now?’

‘I accepted him, and then I returned him to his mother.’

‘Are you crazy mad in the head, Hector Cross?’ Nastiya demanded.

‘Some may say so.’ Hector smiled and went on. ‘But then Aazim Muktar 
Tippoo Tip gave me the final proof of his innocence.’

‘What was that, you silly man?’

‘Although I was completely in his power, he allowed me to walk away and climb 
on the aircraft and return here to Abu Zara unscathed.’

Paddy O’Quinn let out a roar of laughter and slapped his wife’s knee. 
‘Hector is right, my darling. There is no stronger proof than that. Now even 
I believe in Aazim Tippoo Tip.’

The tension in the room broke and they exchanged sheepish nods and grins. Only 
Nastiya removed Paddy’s hand from her knee and challenged Hector one last 
time. ‘And I am sure that, like the true blue Englishman you are, you even 
shook this murdering mullah’s hand and I am sure that you are not even going 
to kill Tariq Hakam?’

‘I can hide nothing from you, tsarina. I shook Aazim Tippoo Tip’s hand and 
found no blood on it. Then I allowed Tariq Hakam to go with his God,’ Hector 
conceded and stood up. ‘To tell you the truth, I feel better for those two 
things. Now I need a few hours of sleep. We will all meet here after breakfast 
in the morning, to consider where we now stand.’

‘I can tell you, for free, exactly where you now stand, Hector Cross. You are 
back at square one and lucky to be there.’ Nastiya tried to sound stern, but 
there was a tiny spark of blue in her eye.

*

Hector held Catherine on his lap as he fed her the bottle. She made small 
grunting sounds of appreciation as she attacked the teat with gusto, totally 
oblivious of the interested audience seated on the rising tiers of seats 
confronting them in the cinema.

‘Only man I know who can plot mayhem and death and at the same time feed an 
infant,’ Paddy O’Quinn remarked and Nastiya punched his arm.

‘You know nothing about babies, husband. Watch Hector and shut up your 
mouth.’

‘That’s enough, my children. Cut the squabbling and settle down. We have 
work to do,’ Hector admonished them. ‘I did not argue with Nastiya last 
night when she said we were back to square one. However, this is not entirely 
true. We do still have a tenuous lead to work on. This was suggested to me by 
Tariq Hakam. I give him full credit for that. We were discussing how the Beast 
set up the ambush for Hazel, and Tariq asked a simple question. He said, “How 
did they know?’”

Hector paused and let that sink in. Then he repeated, ‘How did the Beast know 
that Hazel was coming up to London that day to see her gynaecologist?’ They 
stirred and murmured agreement.

‘The only ones that knew on our side were Hazel and me and Agatha, her PA, 
who set up the appointment. I phoned Agatha yesterday evening and she was 
absolutely adamant that she had told nobody. She was extremely distressed that 
I even made the suggestion. She has worked for Hazel for fifteen years and she 
is completely reliable.’

‘Hazel’s gynae knew,’ Nastiya volunteered.

‘Yes, you are right. Mr Donnovan knew. I am returning to London this 
afternoon to speak to him, but it’s going to be a little embarrassing to 
suggest to him that he broke patient confidentiality. I want Paddy and Nastiya 
to come with me, and yes okay, Dave, I saw you looking anxious. You can come 
along. There is a good chance that we will need you.’ Dave Imbiss smiled with 
relief. Hector went on. ‘For the time being, Catherine will be safe and well 
cared for here at Seascape with Bonnie and all her back-up team.’ He glanced 
at his wristwatch. ‘Time is nine thirteen. There is a flight at eleven thirty 
for London Heathrow. If you all move arse we can make it.’

*

The four of them dined that night at Number Eleven. From the head of the table 
Hector raised his glass to them. ‘I have just realized that exactly four 
months have passed since Hazel left me. It seems like a much shorter time. I 
still walk into every room in this house and expect her to be there. I want you 
to join me in wishing her Godspeed.’

Hours later, when Paddy and Nastiya went up to their own room, Nastiya sat 
before the dressing-table mirror in a pink satin robe and brushed out her hair. 
She watched Paddy in the mirror as he lay on the bed with the evening paper. 
‘Do you know what Hector needs?’ she asked him.

‘Tell me,’ he grunted as he turned the page.

‘He needs a good woman in his bed to help him forget.’

Paddy sat bolt upright and crumpled the news-sheet with alarm.

‘Don’t you dare suggest that to him! He will kill you, you callous Russian 
tart.’

‘Callous I don’t know. Tart I do know, and it’s good and sweet. I can 
give you a little taste if you like.’

*

Early the next morning Hector found parking in Harley Street, and he walked 
half a block to Alan Donnovan’s clinic. He climbed the stairs rather than 
take the lift and when he entered the reception area it was empty. He stood at 
the desk for only a few minutes before the receptionist returned from Alan’s 
room carrying an armful of patients’ files.

‘I am so sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Cross.’

‘That’s all right, Victoria.’ She seemed a little flustered to see him, 
but he put that down to the pressure of working for a man like Alan.

‘Mr Donnovan is running quite a bit late. Do you have something else you need 
to do?’

‘That’s all right. I am in no hurry. I can wait,’ Hector told her.

She stacked the files on her desk. In her free hand she held an iPhone S4, and 
now she laid it down beside the pile of files as the intercom rang.

‘Excuse me, Mr Cross. Everything seems to be happening at once this 
morning.’ She picked up the intercom and spoke into it. ‘Yes, Mr Donnovan. 
Yes, at once.’ She dropped the intercom in its cradle. ‘Please excuse me 
again, Mr Cross.’

She started towards the inner rooms. She left her iPhone lying beside the 
files. Hector noticed that the device was identical to his own. It triggered 
something in his mind and suddenly it all seemed to drop into place. The answer 
to the conundrum had been staring him in the face all along. He had overlooked 
Victoria as though she was a piece of furniture. He was chagrined by the fact 
that he had not worked it out long before.

‘Listen, Victoria,’ he called after her. ‘I have just remembered 
something else I should do. It wasn’t really important that I see Mr Donnovan 
today anyway. Please cancel my appointment, and I will call you again next week 
to make another.’

‘Oh, are you sure? All right, but I am so sorry for this, Mr Cross.’ She 
fled for Alan’s door.

As it closed, Hector leaned across the desk and scooped up the girl’s iPhone. 
He slipped his own out of its pouch on his belt and switched them. He hoped 
that it might be some time before she tumbled to the exchange. He was not 
worried that he might have left vital information in the girl’s hands. Dave 
Imbiss had taught him how to keep his phone impregnable and squeaky clean. He 
left the clinic and went down to where he had parked. He drove back to No. 11, 
where he found the other three members of his team in the library.

‘That didn’t take you too long, boss. We didn’t expect you back so 
soon,’ Dave Imbiss told him.

‘I went to get you a little present. Here you go.’ He tossed him 
Victoria’s iPhone.

‘Thanks a thousand.’ Dave caught it neatly. ‘But I already have one.’

‘One like this you ain’t got,’ Hector assured him. ‘What I want you to 
do is take it down to the workshop and strip every bit of information out of 
it. I want the full list of its contact numbers. All the messages received and 
sent, either in voice or SMS. I want copies of all the videos in memory. I want 
you to look particularly hard at everything dated from the week of Hazel’s 
death up to the present time.’

‘Where did you get this, boss?’ Dave examined the iPhone with sudden keen 
attention, turning it over in his hands, not even glancing at Hector as he 
asked the questions. ‘Who does it belong to? How did you get your hands on 
it?’

‘I stole it from the receptionist at Alan Donnovan’s clinic. Alan is 
Hazel’s gynaecologist. The receptionist’s name is Victoria Vusamazulu. She 
is a cute little African number and her name in Zulu is a political war-cry 
meaning “Rouse the Zulu Nation”. I am not sure about the nation, but with 
her physical assets I have little doubt she could rouse a few of the dead. She 
has probably woken up to my switch of her phone already, but I can stall her 
until tomorrow. You have got until then to suck her iPhone dry. Apart from her 
boss, Victoria is the only one who knew that Hazel was coming up to London on 
the day of the ambush.’

Dave grinned with delight at the challenge. ‘It won’t take that long. This 
little Zulu number will soon have no secrets from me. Excuse me, folks.’

Hector resisted the urge to follow Dave down to the workshop in the basement. 
Dave was one of the best in the business but he would work even better without 
unsolicited advice and chivvying. Hector left him to get on with it, and he 
went up to his study.

Agatha had digitized all Hazel’s information from the time she first came to 
work as her PA. On Hector’s desk she had left an external hard drive that 
contained all of it; many hundreds of gigabytes.

Now that the trail of Hazel’s killer had gone cold in Mecca, Hector was 
determined to go right back to the beginning of Hazel’s dazzling career, and 
search out all the rivals she had left along the road. As dearly as he loved 
her, Hector never once doubted Hazel’s capacity for making enemies. She had 
kicked and clawed her way to the top of a tall heap, and she had never backed 
away from a fight.

If you spend your entire life shaking the mountains, churning the oceans and 
beating the jungles, as Hazel had done, you are bound to flush out some pretty 
scary creatures. Hector began a fresh search for one of these. The most vicious 
and vindictive of them all; the enemy who would make a great white shark seem 
like a toothless Chihuahua.

He had been at work for only a couple of hours when the intercom rang. It was 
Agatha.

‘Good morning, Mr Cross. I have the receptionist from Mister Donnovan’s 
clinic on the line. I tried to put her off, but she is most insistent. Will you 
take the call?’

‘Thank you, Agatha. I’ll take it.’ He made a mental note to have a 
serious talk to Agatha. He badly needed a personal assistant, and she would be 
perfect in the job. Hazel had been her whole life. Perhaps now she might 
transfer that loyalty to him. A side benefit in the arrangement was the fact 
that there would be no danger of any emotional entanglements. He put that 
thought aside, and spoke into the handset. ‘Cross.’

‘I am sorry to bother you, Mr Cross. This is Vicky Vusamazulu. There seems to 
have been a mix-up. I noticed on your first visit to the clinic that you have 
an iPhone S4, exactly like mine…’

‘Yes, I have,’ Hector replied, and then he groaned. ‘Oh, damn it to hell. 
Now I understand what must have happened. I have been unable to open my phone. 
It’s been refusing to accept my password. I was standing at your desk this 
morning when you left the room. I was going to make a call, and then I changed 
my mind. Instead I went to the toilet. Then I realized I had left my phone in 
your office. I returned to your reception. You weren’t in the room, but I saw 
an iPhone lying on the desk. I thought it was mine and I took it. I do 
apologize, Vicky. It was very stupid of me. You don’t have my phone, by any 
chance, do you?’

‘That is why I am calling you, sir. I do have yours. I know it’s yours 
because you have written your number inside the back cover. Mine has a lot of 
very personal information on it. Can I come to your house after work this 
evening to exchange phones with you?’

‘Please forgive me, Victoria. I am going out in the next few minutes, and I 
won’t return until late tonight. But I will take your phone with me, if it 
has very sensitive information in it. Can’t trust anybody these days. I will 
stop by your office first thing in the morning to make the exchange.’

‘Oh dear! You can’t make it any time today? It really is inconvenient for 
me.’

‘Sorry, Victoria. Tomorrow before ten a.m., I promise you.’ He hung up 
before the girl could protest further.

Dave Imbiss called him on the intercom a few minutes after five that afternoon.

‘Sorry, boss. It took longer than I thought. Miss Vusamazulu is a cunning 
little vixen. She put a whole bunch of booby traps into her machine. But I have 
got it all out for you at last.’

‘Good man. Tell me about it.’

‘Better you come and have a look and a listen for yourself. We will need to 
use the cinema. I have got about an hour of videos to show you. Before you 
come, you should take a calm pill, or maybe even two. What I have for you is 
going to blow your mind, boss.’

‘I’ll be down in five. Give Paddy and Nastiya a call to join us for this 
gala performance.’

Paddy and Nastiya were sitting in the centre of the second row of seats when 
Hector entered the theatre. Dave was fiddling with the electronic equipment. He 
looked up as Hector swung one long leg over the first row and dropped into the 
seat beside Nastiya.

‘Sorry to disappoint, folks. We ain’t got no commercials. So, I’ll go 
straight to the main features,’ Dave told them. ‘Firstly, some selected 
conversations. A fact that most iPhone owners do not know is that nothing is 
ever lost; no matter how many times you delete it we can always get it back. 
Miss Vusamazulu had two shots at deleting this particular conversation, but 
here it comes again, recorded on the day that Hazel had her final consultation 
with Alan Donnovan.’ Dave started the audio machine. The first sound was the 
single ring tone of a mobile phone and immediately afterwards there was click 
as the receiver was lifted. There was a pause and then a woman’s voice.

‘Hello. Is that you, Aleutian?’

The answer came immediately.

‘I told you not to name names, bitch.’ The cadence was American hip-hop. 
The delivery was arrogant. The woman’s soft gasp of contrition was barely 
audible. Then her voice took on a submissive pleading tone.

‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’

‘Then don’t forget to delete this call when we finish. Now tell me! Has she 
come?’

‘Yes, she is here. But her husband has gone out. He told Doctor that he would 
return at one thirty.’

‘Good!’ said the male voice, and the line went dead. Dave switched off the 
audio. They were all silent for a while.

Then Hector said, ‘Aleutian. Was that the name she used?’

‘That’s what it sounds like. Anyway, it’s probably a gangland handle; a 
nom de guerre. Not his passport name, if you know what I mean.’

‘Play the call again.’

Dave ran it back and started it again. They all leaned forward to listen. When 
it ended Paddy agreed. ‘Aleutian. Definitely Aleutian. So at least we have 
some sort of name to work with now.’

‘The time and date are right. I dropped Hazel at Donnovan’s clinic and went 
to run a few errands around town,’ Hector agreed. ‘What else is there, 
Dave?’

‘The next call was at nine forty-five the same evening,’ Dave told them. 
‘This is Aleutian calling Victoria.’

He started the recorder. There were four ring tones, and then the girl’s 
unmistakable voice and intonation.

‘Hello. This is Victoria.’

‘I’ll be there to pick you up in ten minutes. Wait for me downstairs, 
outside the tobacconist. I am driving a rented blue VW.’

‘You are late. You said seven.’

‘Okay. Forget it. I’ll get another ho for tonight. Pussy stacked up knee 
deep around here.’

‘No! I didn’t mean that. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I’ll make it up 
to you. I promise.’

‘You had better. I have a hard-on here that will blow the glass out of all 
the windows in the street when it bursts.’

Victoria giggled. ‘You are so funny. Come here and blow my window out, lover 
boy.’

Hector intervened softly. ‘At the time that cultured conversation was in 
progress, Hazel was lying in a coma with a bullet in her brain and just a few 
hours away from dying.’

Paddy looked down and shuffled his feet. Nastiya took Hector’s hand that lay 
on the bench between them. She squeezed it hard, but remained silent. There was 
nothing that any of them could say for his comfort.

Dave coughed and broke the silence. ‘There are four more conversations 
between the two of them but it’s all the same sort of dismal stuff. It’s 
just threats and boasts of sexual prowess from him and a few recriminations 
from the girl. However, there’s not been a call from Aleutian for the past 
few weeks. I’ve tried the number, but it’s unobtainable.’

‘Either he dumped her, or he left the country a few weeks back,’ Hector 
suggested.

‘He just dropped her,’ Nastiya said with certainty. ‘Men like Aleutian 
don’t stick around more than a few weeks. They move on once they have had a 
good taste of the tart.’ Significantly she raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow 
at Paddy.

‘No private jokes here, please,’ Dave cautioned her. ‘Let’s keep it 
serious and on the ball. So that’s the end of the phone calls but they have 
given us some good stuff.’ He looked at Hector. ‘If you are ready, I can 
run the videos for you, boss?’

‘Go ahead please, Dave.’

Dave dimmed the lights and turned on the first video that he had copied from 
the iPhone. There was immediately a cacophony of background noise over the 
audio speakers, men’s raised voices and women’s high-pitched shrieks of 
laughter, loud music and the clatter of bottles and glasses. On the screen the 
images were jumbled and confused, as the camera panned wildly from ceiling to 
floor, over a table of beer bottles and half-empty glasses, down onto close-ups 
of human feet and legs. Then it steadied. The scene was obviously the interior 
of a squalid nightclub. The tables were crowded together around a tiny dance 
floor. Victoria’s unmistakable voice rose above the hubbub.

‘Be cool, everybody! Remember, this is your audition for The X Factor.’ The 
lens pulled back and focussed onto a group of young people sitting around a 
table laden with drinks and overflowing ashtrays. Some of them leered at the 
camera and raised their glasses in salute, others held hand-rolled joints at 
jaunty angles in the corners of their mouths and blew puffs of smoke, and one 
thrust his finger down his throat and made vomit noises.

The camera zoomed in on a pretty blonde girl sitting on a boy’s lap at the 
far side of the table, and Victoria’s voice instructed her, ‘Come on, 
Angie. Do some magic trick.’

Angie hooked her thumbs in the top of her dress and pulled it down to her 
waist. Both her large white breasts popped out and she took one in each hand 
and pointed her nipples at the camera. ‘Bang! Bang! You’re dead!’ she 
squealed. The camera shook with laughter, then moved on to the next reveller in 
the circle.

‘Here we go!’ Dave Imbiss told them and froze the frame. They were looking 
at the image of a dark-skinned male. Hector guessed he might be thirty or a 
little older. His hair was gelled into a quiff and he wore a hoodie jacket with 
the sleeves rolled up above the elbows and the hood thrown back. His forearms 
were muscular and toned as though from gym work. He was good-looking in a 
brutal fashion, with a cruel cynical mouth. His expression was studiedly 
nonchalant.

Dave let them scrutinize the image for a little longer. ‘I think we have here 
the missing link in the puzzle; the mover and shaker who set up the hit. This, 
boys and girls, is Aleutian.’

Hector straightened up in his seat and leaned forward like a hound with the 
scent of the quarry in his nostrils. ‘Do we have any more footage of this 
beauty?’ he asked in a deadly quiet tone.

‘Plenty, boss. Plenty. Victoria obviously has the big-time hots for him. She 
just can’t get enough.’

‘Neither can I,’ Hector murmured. ‘I want him very badly. Let’s move 
on, Dave.’

The video started again and Victoria’s voice picked up the commentary. 
‘Ladies and gentlemen. They don’t come any cooler than this. This is Mr 
Cool in person. Give your fans a wave, Mr Cool.’

Mr Cool lifted two fingers in a V sign and placed his thumb between them. 
Without a change of expression he prodded it towards the lens in a grossly lewd 
gesture. Victoria hooted and she sang, ‘Do that to me one more time!’

The man in the frame leaned back in his chair and locked both his hands behind 
his head. He winked at the camera. Dave froze the frame again.

‘Okay, folks, check his left hand,’ he told them and zoomed in on it. ‘Is 
that the red tattoo, boss?’

‘That’s the one, Dave. The Maalik tattoo. But are we sure this one is 
Aleutian? She hasn’t used that name in this shot. Go on running the 
footage.’

Dave started the video again, but the camera panned off the subject and Dave 
apologized. ‘Nothing more on this one. But not to worry too much. There is 
plenty more on three of the others; enough to make a strong man throw up.’

‘Let’s see them, please,’ Hector ordered.

The next video was a wide shot of the same nightclub dance floor. The camera 
operator must have been standing on a table to achieve such a high-angle view. 
On the closest edge of the dance floor Victoria Vusamazulu was dancing with the 
man with the Maalik tattoo. She was oscillating her hips, throwing her head 
from side to side so that her long false hairpiece whipped across her face. Her 
partner towered over her. He had shed the hoodie jacket and the sleeves of his 
sweatshirt were cut away to expose the full length of his heavily muscled arms. 
Hector was able to judge his size by comparing him to Victoria. He stood head 
and shoulders taller than her.

He was big, very big, and he moved well. He was balanced and coordinated. He 
was quick on his feet. Hector judged that he would be a dangerous man in a 
fight. Suddenly the man snatched the hairpiece off Victoria’s head and he 
circled her, lashing her with the hairpiece across her back and buttocks as 
though he was her slave driver. She writhed in feigned agony. He reached out to 
the zip fastener running down the back of her dress and pulled it down to the 
cleft of her buttocks. She held the front of the dress to her breasts but her 
back was naked and shiny black with sweat.

The other dancers crowded around them, clapping time to the music and to their 
primitive gyrations, urging them on with shrill screams and yips of excitation.

The man closed in behind Victoria, grabbed her hips and pulled her towards him, 
pounding his loins into her buttocks in a graphic parody of anal intercourse. 
She pushed back at him just as vigorously, meeting each of his thrusts, riding 
out his assault.

Suddenly the screen went black and the noise cut off into complete silence. 
Dave switched on the overhead lights.

‘Sorry for that,’ he said cheerfully. ‘End of video. We will never know 
how that story ends.’

‘And a good thing too. No nice girl would be safe in bed with a husband who 
watched that kind of thing.’ Nastiya gave her opinion and prodded Paddy in 
the ribs.

‘If you thought that was a little over the top, Nastiya, you had better leave 
the room now before I run the last one,’ Dave warned her. She shook her head 
and moved closer to Paddy. She took a firm grip of his arm.

‘I can trust this man to protect me,’ she said. ‘It is my duty to stay 
here. One day it may be my duty to kill that nasty Aleutian animal.’

‘How do we know this is Aleutian?’ Hector cut in. ‘Come on, Dave, give us 
the name please.’

‘Your wish is my command, boss. His name is coming right up!’ He switched 
off the lights and started the last video.

Once again there was a rapid series of fuzzy, out-of-focus shots of the floor 
and ceiling of what was clearly a woman’s bedroom, with pink bedclothes on 
the queen-size bed and a dressing table crowded with toiletries and perfume 
bottles. There was also a menagerie of fluffy animal toys arranged on the 
single chair standing beside the bed. Then the frame steadied as if the camera 
had been placed on a tripod. Focus pulled in on the bed. Now the man from the 
nightclub sequence lay on the bed on his back. He was naked. He stared into the 
lens with that same enigmatic expression. He had one hand behind his head and 
the tattoo was in clear focus. With his other hand he was stroking himself.

‘Come on,’ he said to the person behind the camera. ‘What are you waiting 
for? Does Mr Big frighten you, bitch?’

Vicky Vusamazulu sashayed into the shot. She also was naked. She undulated her 
glossy black buttocks as she went to the man on the bed. She swung one leg over 
him and straddled him.

No one in the theatre spoke again for a while. Twice more Victoria stood up 
from the bed and came back behind the camera to change the angle and the focus, 
from wide angle to tight close-up, and then she ran back to the bed and 
launched herself into the action once more.

‘Isn’t it strange?’ Hector asked at last.

‘Isn’t what strange?’ Paddy demanded without taking his eyes from the 
screen.

‘Isn’t it strange how boring it is to watch other people doing this, when 
it’s such great fun to do it yourself?’

Nastiya laughed delightedly. ‘I love you, Hector Cross! You can be so wise 
and funny.’

‘Fast forward please, Dave,’ Hector insisted, and Dave shrugged.

‘Okay, but I warn you that you are going to miss a load of good stuff.’

The movements of the couple on the screen became as jerky and frantically rapid 
as those in a Charlie Chaplin black-and-white movie from the 1920s. The sound 
was squeaky and unintelligible.

Nastiya started giggling and that set them all off. At last Dave Imbiss 
controlled his laughter sufficiently to warn them, ‘Okay, quiet please, the 
lot of you! Here comes the moment we have all been waiting for!’

The action calmed down into real time and Aleutian spoke out clearly.

‘Brace yourself, you little beauty! Here comes the deadly African black 
snake!’

‘Oh yes, Aleutian! Give it all to me, Aleutian, you dirty bastard, you!’

‘There you are!’ Dave Imbiss said smugly. ‘Ask for the name and Imbiss 
gives it to you not once but twice. That’s what I call real service.’ He 
reached across and switched off the video.

Hector broke the silence that followed. ‘That girl hasn’t been very well 
brought up.’ He gave his opinion gravely. ‘Did you notice that at the end 
there she didn’t even say please?’ He stood up and went to the podium. He 
thrust his hands into his pockets and turned to face them.

‘Great work, Dave. You never let me down. Right now you have made Victoria 
Vusamazulu the hottest property in town. She is our only conduit to Aleutian. 
We have to keep her on the boil.’ He looked at Nastiya. ‘Your job, I’m 
afraid, Nazzy.’

‘Me?’ She looked surprised. ‘It doesn’t seem to me that Victoria shows 
any signs of lesbian tendencies.’

‘You know as well as I do that a woman is much more open to a friendly 
approach from another woman than from a man. She doesn’t expect a pass. I 
want you and Vicky to become soul sisters. That way we stay close to 
Aleutian.’

‘Okay.’ Nastiya shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Hector turned to Dave. ‘Give me the girl’s iPhone, please.’

Dave passed it to him and Hector switched it on and dialled in a number.

‘I am dialling my own iPhone,’ he explained. As soon as the ring tone 
sounded he switched on the speaker, and cautioned the others to silence.

‘Hello. Hector Cross’s phone. Victoria Vusamazulu speaking.’

‘This is Hector Cross, Vicky. Do you still need your iPhone this evening 
rather than tomorrow? I think I can arrange that.’

‘Oh, yes please, Mr Cross,’ she exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘That would 
be wonderful. I am totally lost without it.’

‘Good. My secretary is going off duty now. I will put her in a taxi and send 
her to you. She will deliver it to you.’

‘Thank you. Thank you so very much, sir.’

‘I take it that you are at home by now. What is your address?’

‘Yes, I am in my flat in Richmond. The address is Forty-seven Gardens Lane 
and the postcode is TW9 5LA. Tell the cabby it’s on the corner with Kew 
Gardens Road. It’s about three hundred yards down the road from the Kew 
Gardens tube station.’

‘That’s fine. My secretary’s name is Natasha Voronov. She is a blonde 
Russian lady. She should be with you in thirty or forty minutes.’

He broke the connection and handed the iPhone to Nastiya. ‘Off you go, 
tsarina. Victoria is waiting for you. Take your time. We’ll keep dinner for 
you.’ He paused a moment and then went on. ‘I tell you what; stop at an 
off-licence on your way. Get Vicky a decent bottle of wine. Tell her that 
it’s a present from me. A big apology for stealing her phone. She might 
invite you to share the bottle with her. She is probably lonely now that 
Aleutian has vanished from the scene. Get chummy with her, get her to share her 
girlie secrets with you. Most likely she will want to complain about Aleutian, 
and tell you what an utter bastard he is. You can complain about Paddy and tell 
her what an utter bastard he is. The two of you should have a great time.’

‘I like that suggestion,’ Nazzy agreed.

*

Nastiya returned from her visit to Victoria’s flat an hour late for dinner. 
The three men were dressed in mess kit and waiting for her in the living room. 
All three of them were on their second whiskies. They stood up as she appeared 
in the doorway.

‘So, how did it go, my lovely?’ Paddy beat the others to the question.

‘Let me go up and change first. I won’t be a minute and then I will come 
down and tell you the full story.’

When she came down the staircase again they all realized it had been worth the 
wait. She was wearing her diamonds and she was gorgeous. As the host, Hector 
took her hand and led her into the dining room. The first course was grilled 
Dover sole served off the bone with wild girolles from Provence smothered in 
saffron sauce.

The food held them in respectful silence for another few minutes, then Nastiya 
sighed with pleasure and dabbed her lips with her napkin before she spoke.

‘She is a sweet child, this Victoria. I like her. Of course she is very 
naïve and crazy about men, like every healthy girl of her age. But she is not 
really bad. She drank two glasses of the wine and she thinks that now I am her 
new best friend. She is lonely like Hector says. She wants someone to talk to. 
In the end it was not easy for me to get away from her. She thinks this 
Aleutian character is going to come back from America and marry her.’

‘So that’s where he has disappeared to. It fits in with his accent and his 
tattoo. Does she know that he was involved in Hazel’s murder?’

Nastiya was firm and certain in her reply. ‘I am sure she does not. Of 
course, I could not press her on the subject, but knowing I work for Hector, 
she brought up the subject herself. She knew all about the murder of Hazel from 
the TV and papers. But she never made the connection to Aleutian. Aleutian told 
her that he is a big wheel in the oil business in California. He asked her to 
help him set up a meeting with Hazel. He wanted to interest Bannock Oil and 
Hazel in some kind of deal he is brewing up. He asked Victoria to let him know 
when Hazel left Doctor Donnovan’s clinic that day so he could wait to meet 
her, accidentally on purpose. I told you, Vicky is very naïve and a little bit 
stupid. But I like her.’

‘So I suppose we are not going to snatch Vicky and make her warble?’ Paddy 
looked at Hector. ‘I am disappointed. That could have been fun.’

Hector smiled and replied, ‘I am pretty damn sure Nastiya is correct. This 
girl is a patsy. She isn’t very bright and she knows nothing. But there is a 
chance that Aleutian might come back for another taste of the good stuff she 
dishes out so freely. That is about the only use she is to him or to us now. Do 
you know if Vicky has his current telephone number or any other contact 
details?’

‘I asked her, but she only has the number we got from her iPhone. She says he 
never answers her calls. She thinks that’s only because he does not have 
roaming on his phone in the USA. All she knows is that he promised he would 
come back and then they would shack up together. She trusts him to keep his 
word.’

‘Keep in contact with her please, Nazzy. It might just happen.’

‘So what do we do until then, boss?’ Dave Imbiss asked. ‘Have we hit 
another dead end, or what?’ They all looked at him but Hector did not answer 
at once. He took a sip from his wine glass and rolled it around his tongue.

‘This Chablis really goes so well with the sole.’

‘We all know that you are a great connoisseur, but that does not really 
answer David’s question,’ Nastiya pointed out.

Hector was saved by the reappearance of Stephen, his butler, and he turned to 
him with mild relief. ‘What is it, Stephen?’

‘I am sorry to bother you, sir. But there is a gentleman at the front door. 
Well, to be truthful, sir, I think he is more a scruffy youth than a gentleman. 
I tried to send him away but he is very insistent. He says that he has been 
sent to you by somebody named Sam Mucker. He said you would know who he means. 
He says it’s a matter of life and death; those were his exact words.’ 
Hector thought about it for a moment.

‘Sam Mucker? I do not have the faintest idea what he is talking about. It’s 
after ten o’clock and we are in the middle of dinner. Please, Stephen, tell 
the fellow to kindly piss off.’

‘It will be a pleasure, Mr Cross.’ Stephen smothered a grin and headed back 
to the door with a firm and determined step. As he closed the door behind him 
Hector suddenly leapt from his chair at the head of the table.

‘Shit!’ he cried. ‘He means Aazim Muktar! Stephen, come back here at 
once!’

The door reopened and Stephen stood to attention in the doorway. ‘You called, 
sir?’

‘I did indeed. Change of plan; please take the gentleman to the library and 
offer him a drink. Treat him like a gentleman no matter what. Be kind to him. 
Tell him I will be with him right away.’ Hector turned back to Dave. ‘No, 
young David, my lad. I don’t think we have hit another dead end. In fact, I 
think the real fun may just be about to begin.’ He rang for the footman and 
told him, ‘Ask Chef to keep the rest of this excellent meal in the warmer for 
me.’ Then he stood up and told the others, ‘Don’t wait for me, I might be 
a little while.’ And he left the dining room and went to the library.

The fewer people who got a look at Aazim Muktar’s agent, the better for all 
of them.

*

The visitor stood in front of the fireplace warming his back. He had a Coke can 
in one hand and Hector saw at once why Stephen had taken exception to him. He 
was unshaven and his hair was matted and greasy. His jeans were tattered and 
had probably never seen the interior of a washing machine. His mouth was sullen 
and his manner hangdog. Everything about him proclaimed that here was one of 
life’s rejects, one of the losers.

Hector went to him and offered his hand. ‘Hello, I am Hector Cross.’ The 
boy took Hector’s hand without hesitation. His eyes were light brown, 
friendly and intelligent, completely at odds with the rest of his appearance.

‘I know. I googled you, Mr Cross. Very impressive you are too. I am Yaf Said, 
but I used to be Rupert Marsh before I found Allah.’ His voice was pleasant 
and decisive.

‘So what do I call you?’

‘Take your pick, sir.’

‘Yaf means friend. I’ll call you that, okay?’

‘Okay, I would like that, sir.’

‘Take a seat, Yaf,’ Hector invited him and he set an example by sinking 
into one of the leather armchairs.

‘The fire is good, sir.’ Yaf declined. ‘It was cold on my bike. Besides, 
I prefer to stand in the presence of my elders and betters.’

Hector blinked with surprise. This kid has got class, he thought, and Yaf 
seemed to read his mind.

‘Please excuse my hair and beard, and my general turn-out. This is my working 
kit.’

‘Aazim Muktar told me that you help other kids find the road they’ve 
lost.’

Yaf’s face lit up at the name. ‘Just the same as Aazim Muktar did for me. 
When I wandered into his mosque I was a wreck, a total wreck. I was sick of 
life, sick of myself and full of drugs. He showed me the way and turned me 
around. He is a truly great man. A great and holy man.’ He grinned 
sheepishly. ‘Hey! Sorry, Mr Cross. I sound like a TV commercial!’

‘I know how you feel. I am also one of his fans.’

‘Aazim Muktar tells me you are looking for a man. He didn’t tell me why, 
and I am not going to ask.’

‘For what it’s worth, the name of the person I want is Aleutian,’ Hector 
said, and Yaf smiled.

‘Out there in the netherworld, names mean either not much or nothing at all. 
Do you know what he looks like, sir?’

‘I have pictures of him,’ Hector confirmed.

‘You have made my day, sir. Pics will make the job a cinch. May I see them, 
please?’

‘I will get them for you. It may take a little time.’ Hector stood up. 
‘When did you last eat, Yaf? You look pretty skinny to me.’

‘I don’t get much time to eat out there.’

‘Well, you’ve got time now. I’ll have the cook send you a stack of 
sandwiches and a bowl of chips with ketchup.’

‘Thank you, sir. That sounds great. But please, no meat. I am a veggie.’

‘Eggs and cheese?’

‘Both those are good.’

Within an hour Dave had printed a dozen stills from Vicky’s videos and Hector 
took them back to the library where Yaf had just demolished a platter of 
cheese, tomato and Marmite sandwiches and was busy with the hard-boiled eggs 
and the bowl of chips. He sprang to his feet when Hector walked into the 
library again.

‘Those were the best sandwiches I have eaten in the fifteen years since my 
mum died and I took to the streets.’ To Hector he did not look much older 
than twenty-five. So he must have been living rough since he was ten.

‘What about your dad?’ he asked, and Yaf smiled ruefully.

‘Never knew him. I don’t think even my mum knew much about him either. 
Maybe I am one of those lucky guys who have only one mother but twenty-five 
putative fathers. I just don’t know.’

Hector smiled at this brave little jest and handed the prints to him. ‘Take a 
look at these, and see what you make of them. But do me a favour and sit down, 
will you? You’re making me nervous, Yaf.’

Yaf sat on the edge of the chair facing Hector and thumbed through Dave’s 
prints, examining each of them carefully.

‘You see the tattoo he is wearing?’ Hector asked.

‘Yeah, that’s a Maalik gang mark. He must be a made man.’ At last he 
looked up at Hector and said, ‘I am sorry, sir. I don’t know this guy but 
he looks like bad news.’

Then he saw Hector’s disappointment and he hurried on. ‘But please don’t 
worry about it, sir. If he is within fifty miles of London I will find him. I 
will have a lot of eyes on the street looking out for him. Can you give me a 
number where I can call you in a hurry? Guys like this move around fast, like 
cruising tiger sharks.’

‘When you do have a contact, you can call me on this number.’ Hector went 
to his desk and scribbled his iPhone number on a blank card. ‘You can get me 
wherever I am on the globe. Call me reverse charges.’ He handed the card to 
Yaf.

Hector walked to the front door with Yaf and watched him climb onto his BWs 
125cc scooter and putter away out of the gates.

‘Probably never see him again, but you never know.’

*

He tried to put the lad out of his mind. However, over the next few days Yaf 
kept wheedling his way back into Hector’s thoughts; even when he was trying 
to concentrate on reading through Hazel’s documentation.

‘This is a cocked-up society when the bankers pull in multimillion-pound 
bonuses and good kids can’t find a job and so they rot on the streets and 
turn bad. We have a shit storm brewing up out there,’ he observed to Paddy 
one day.

It made him think about Catherine Cayla and what the world had in store for her 
further down the line. He realized how much he had missed his daughter and how 
desperately he needed to see her again. So a few days later he took Paddy, 
Nastiya and Dave Imbiss and they all flew back to Abu Zara.

*

‘We have been a very good little girl, Daddy. We have put on almost a whole 
pound since you went away.’ Bonnie placed Catherine in his arms the moment he 
entered the lobby of the Seascape penthouse. ‘But we have missed our daddy so 
much, haven’t we, baby?’

Hector’s ear was slightly out of tune to this variety of nursery talk and he 
was not quite sure who had missed whom, but he hoped it was not the way Bonnie 
made it sound.

Hector’s arrival was just in time to allow him to give Catherine her bottle 
and put her into her cot. The next morning he placed her in a modern version of 
the papoose, a cocoon made of nylon on an aluminium frame, ergonomically 
designed to protect and cosset an infant. Dave Imbiss had obtained from 
somewhere this high-tech baby carrier for him. When it was strapped to his 
chest Hector could watch Catherine’s face as he ran. Or he could strap it on 
his back so Catherine could look over his shoulder.

He took her for a ten-mile run along the beachfront. She seemed to enjoy the 
rocking motion, at least she made no audible protest; rather she slept the 
whole way and only woke up when they returned home with an appetite like a lion 
cub. She had missed her feed, as Bonnie announced to the world in stentorian 
and disapproving tones.

The days settled into a quiet but not unpleasant routine. Of course Paddy and 
Nastiya had their own apartment in Abu Zara City. They both worked out of Cross 
Bow headquarters in the same building, although days might pass without them 
meeting. However, Paddy phoned Hector every evening to discuss developments; 
but there were few of these and none of any great significance.

At least twice a week Nastiya invited Hector to dinner at their apartment or at 
one of the many five-star restaurants in the city. Always there would be one of 
Nastiya’s guests in the company: young, female, nubile and unmarried. It was 
amazing where she found so many of them. She must have trawled the cabin crews 
of all the airlines, the offices of the secretarial staff of the British and 
American embassies and the major global companies operating in the city. Even 
when Hector adroitly side-stepped these obvious man traps, Nastiya never gave 
up trying. It became a friendly game between them. Paddy looked on with an 
amused air.

Dave Imbiss spent many hours each day at the Seascape penthouse checking and 
improving the security arrangements surrounding Catherine Cayla, and making 
certain that his men stayed alert and at the top of their game. Baby Catherine 
was never left alone. One of her three nursemaids was by her side every minute 
of the day and night. There was always an armed guard outside the nursery door, 
and another Cross Bow team in the CCTV monitor room down the passage watching 
all the entrances to the apartments and the interior of the nursery on the 
screens.

Hector ate breakfast with Catherine at six every morning. He waded into the 
bacon and eggs but she stayed with her bottle. Afterwards he took her for their 
constitutional run along the beachfront. When they returned to the penthouse he 
handed her over to her nurses and spent the rest of the morning perusing the 
poignant records of Hazel’s life.

For Hector, the principal and most fascinating of these were her diaries. These 
were the only documents of Hazel’s that Agatha had not digitized. Hazel had 
started writing them up from her fourteenth birthday. There were over twenty 
identical black booklets in her collection, one for each year of her life after 
puberty.

The diaries were written in a minute script, and strewn with her codes and 
secret writing. It took all of his imagination and ingenuity to break some of 
her codes. She had recorded every detail of her life, both trivial and 
apocalyptic. Hector was enthralled. He had already learned as much about her as 
he had ever dreamed was feasible. But here were her boasts and her confessions 
written in her own hand. She even described with relish the loss of her 
virginity on her fifteenth birthday, to her tennis coach on the back seat of 
his old Ford. This gave Hector a stab of jealousy.

‘The randy bastard was almost thirty years older than my innocent little 
baby. He should have been locked up for what he did to her. Bloody 
paedophile!’ Then he consoled himself with the thought that the bloody 
paedophile was probably fat, bald and impotent by now, and that Hazel had 
patently enjoyed the experience. He shuffled through the diaries, skipping the 
intervening years until he came to the day of their first meeting.

This was one of the pivotal points in his own existence. He could never forget 
a single detail of it. It had taken place at the Bannock Oil installation here 
in the Abu Zarian desert. With the other top brass of Bannock Oil he had waited 
for her arrival in a blustering sandstorm. Her helicopter had appeared out of 
the looming dun sand clouds. He recalled how when it landed and she appeared in 
the door of the fuselage he had been unprepared for the jolt of lightning that 
flashed up his spine. She had been so goddamned magnificent.

On that first day she had treated him in an off-handed manner, which made him 
furious. He was unaccustomed to being spurned. Hated? Yes, but never so 
casually dismissed.

Now at last he was able to read her own thoughts on that fateful day.

She had described him as all attitude, testosterone and muscles. I pray to God 
that one day he will forgive me for finding such an obnoxious oaf to be quite 
cute and very sexy.

*

Six weeks after his arrival in Abu Zara Hector was awoken by the ringing of his 
iPhone. He rolled over and switched on the bedside light, and then he glanced 
at the alarm clock. It was ten minutes to four in the morning. He picked up the 
phone.

‘Cross,’ he spoke into the mouthpiece.

‘It’s me. Yaf!’

Hector sat up quickly. ‘Tell me!’ he said.

‘He is here. But you better come quickly. He is moving about a lot. No 
telling when he will disappear again.’

‘What is your time in London?’

‘Just before midnight,’ Yaf replied. Hector made a quick calculation.

‘Okay!’ he said. ‘I’ll be there around about eleven a.m. your time 
tomorrow. Go to my home in the morning and wait for me. I will tell my butler 
to let you in and my chef will give you a slap-up breakfast.’ He rang off and 
called Paddy’s apartment. Nastiya’s sleepy voice answered.

‘This can only be Hector Cross!’ she said.

‘Good guess,’ he commended her. ‘Aleutian has shown up in London. Tell 
that lover boy in bed with you to get his pants on. Tell him to requisition the 
Bannock Oil G5 for an immediate and urgent to Farnborough. Tell them to rouse 
the pilots out of bed if needs be. We are going after the murderous bastard.’

Hector left Dave Imbiss at Seascape Mansions to command Catherine’s guards. 
The rest of them in the G5 took off from Abu Zara at 0843 and touched down at 
Farnborough five hours later. Hector’s chauffeur drove out onto the tarmac to 
pick them up. A little over an hour later they parked in the underground garage 
of No. 11. Yaf Said was waiting in the kitchens where he had struck up a 
friendship with Cynthia, the chef. She was fattening him up on her famous 
chocolate pudding and ice cream. He dropped his spoon and rushed up the stairs 
when he heard Hector’s voice.

Hector introduced him to Paddy and Nastiya, and then called an immediate 
council of war in the library. At Hector’s invitation Yaf outlined what had 
taken place in their absence.

‘I had been getting reports about Aleutian for the last couple of weeks; 
mostly from nightclubs in the central London area. But every time I followed it 
up it turned out to be a false sighting or the mark had disappeared by the time 
I reached the scene. Then I scored a positive hit in a place called Fusion 
Fire. It’s a pretty flash dive, strobe lighting and mirrors, lots of dealers 
and whores lurking about, but the music is wild. I got up real close to 
Aleutian at the bar. He was drinking with three other black guys, and I checked 
out his tattoo. It was the guy you want, no question about it. But his pals 
were calling him Oscar, not Aleutian.’

‘When was that?’ Hector asked.

‘Friday two weeks ago. I didn’t want to call you right away. It might have 
been a one-off appearance. I waited for him there for the next four nights. But 
he didn’t show again. So I put my people into all the clubs in the area. We 
found him hanging out in two other joints over the next week, and then he 
popped up at Fusion again, two days in a row. That’s when I called you. My 
thinking is that he is moving around, changing his digs every day. There is no 
pattern to his movements. You should stake out all the clubs where he has been 
spotted recently. He seems to be a creature of habit. I think that’s your 
best chance of catching up with him.’

‘Makes sense,’ Hector agreed. ‘But what about you, Yaf?’

Yaf looked uncomfortable, and it took him a little time to gather his courage 
and speak out.

‘I was happy to tell you where you may be able to find this fellow, but I 
don’t want to be there when you do find him. I gave up all that rough stuff a 
long time ago when Allah took me under his wing. No offence, Mr Cross. It’s 
been a great pleasure to meet a man like you, but now I think I should leave 
you to go about your own business and I’ll go about mine.’

‘Thank you again, Yaf. It’s probably a wise decision you are making. It has 
also been a pleasure for me to meet you. You reaffirm my faith in the younger 
generation. If ever I can help you in any way you know where to find me. In the 
meantime, can I pay you for your time and trouble?’

Yaf held up both hands in alarm. ‘No, please. I didn’t do this for money. I 
did it for a great and holy man.’

‘Very well, Yaf. But there must be some charity run by your mosque to which I 
can make a contribution.’

‘Well, sir, to tell the truth we do get a lot of our funding from the Muslim 
Youthwork Foundation,’ Yaf replied diffidently. ‘You could make a 
contribution online. You don’t have to give your name.’

‘I will do that in your name,’ Hector assured him.

‘Thank you, sir. It isn’t necessary, but I assure you that the money will 
be very well spent.’ Yaf reached into the pocket of his hoodie jacket and 
brought out a slip of paper. ‘Here’s a list of all the joints where we have 
spotted Aleutian. He usually shows up in one of them around midnight if he 
shows up at all, but then he stays until dawn. I hope you find what you are 
looking for, sir.’

Hector walked with him to the front door and told him, ‘I hope our friendship 
does not end here, Yaf. Any time you are passing, please drop in. If I am not 
here then Cynthia, in the kitchen, will always rustle you up a cup of coffee 
and a bite. I’ll tell her you are always welcome.’

‘That’s kind of you, sir. Goodbye and ma’a salama.’ They shook hands 
and then Hector watched him straddle his motor scooter and ride away. He knew 
he would never see him again. Yaf was his own man, too proud to come around 
begging.

*

‘Okay, the three clubs on Yaf Said’s list are Fusion Fire, the Rabid Dog 
and the Portals of Paradise, all in the central London area, from Soho to 
Elephant and Castle. I don’t know any of these joints, do either of you?’ 
Hector looked at Nastiya first.

‘No, not quite my style,’ she retorted primly.

‘What about you, Paddy?’

‘No, but they sound like a great deal of fun.’

‘Here is how we should go about this. I have checked the location of all 
three clubs on the internet. They are scattered over quite a large area; a good 
few miles apart. We will have to split up to cover all three of them. As Yaf 
has told us, it’s no use starting the search before midnight. We have to go 
on the late-night shift. If one of us makes a positive ID then he or she calls 
the team together. We keep Aleutian under observation and follow him when he 
leaves the club. One of us will be driving the Q-car. At that time of the 
morning the streets should be pretty much empty. As soon as we get him alone 
and unobserved we slip him the Hypnos.’

The Hypnos was a tiny self-contained hypodermic syringe which could be palmed 
in one hand, or concealed in the seam of a jacket sleeve. It was made of a type 
of PVC which could not be detected by X-ray or any other screening device. The 
barrel was green in colour. The non-metallic needle was primed by flicking off 
the protective cover with a thumb. The needle was a mere 2cm in length and 
needed only to pierce the skin to deliver 2cc of a powerful knock-down drug 
which almost instantly rendered the subject totally paralysed. It was named for 
the Greek goddess of sleep.

It was impossible to obtain supplies of these weapons unless, like Dave Imbiss, 
you had contacts in the Chemical Warfare Division of the US Military.

‘Then as soon as Aleutian goes down we bundle him into the Q-car and bring 
him back here,’ Hector went on outlining the plan. ‘By the way, the 
basement is soundproof and there is a room down there where I clean my fishing 
tackle, but it will make a very good interrogation room. We will have all the 
right equipment on hand. The walls and the floor are tiled and easy to hose 
down. If the waterboard does not convince him, we might have to make a bit of a 
mess before Aleutian feels the urge to speak out, and give us the name of his 
employer. When we have finished with him we pack what’s left of him into an 
airtight and waterproof fish box and export him to Abu Zara in the G5. If we 
choose the right takeoff slot there shouldn’t be any worries about customs 
wanting to look inside the box. At the other end Dave Imbiss will take Aleutian 
out to one of the oil-exploration teams that are drilling in the new Zara 
Number Twelve concession. Aleutian goes down the drill hole that presently is 
at the sixteen-thousand-foot mark, and then he comes up again in the slurry 
minced into a fine paste by the rotary diamond drill bit.’

He gave them a wolfish grin and went on. ‘I know that it is a fairly sketchy 
battle plan, but I also know that you two are pretty damn good at improvising 
according to changing circumstances.’

He checked his wristwatch and stood up. ‘We have an hour to change for 
dinner. I know Chef has something special lined up for us, but tragically there 
will be no wine served with it. We want to be bright and razor sharp for later 
in the evening. After dinner I plan a couple of hours’ shut-eye. Then we will 
reassemble around eleven p.m. It will take an hour or more to get into our 
positions. I think Nastiya should go to the Portals of Paradise, for obvious 
reasons. Paddy will take the Rabid Dog for equally obvious reasons. I will 
stake out Fusion Fire, for no good reason that I can think of.’

‘I imagine there are a few dolly-birds from your flaming past who could 
supply us with ample reasons,’ Nastiya suggested.

Hector went up to his dressing room and opened the secret door behind the 
fireplace. From one of the open shelves he took down the box which contained 
his pistol, already in its shoulder holster. He pulled on a pair of surgical 
rubber gloves and wiped the weapon down carefully to remove his own 
fingerprints. Then he reloaded the magazine with the special ammunition that 
Dave had supplied. Finally, he wiped the pistol down a second time, just to be 
sure it was clean. He had calculated the odds for and against carrying the 
weapon tonight. It was a serious offence if the authorities found it on him, 
but he might be taking an even greater risk to go up against someone of the 
calibre of Aleutian with just his bare hands.

*

They dropped Nastiya at the Portals of Paradise a few minutes after midnight. 
The entrance was discreetly set in a narrow mews. There was a small crowd of 
excited young people grouped around the door. A pair of large and aggressive 
doormen barred their entrance to the premises, while an urbane door manager in 
dinner jacket and black tie made his selection of those he deemed worthy to 
enter such hallowed premises.

Hector parked the Q-car at the entrance to the mews, and he and Paddy watched 
Nastiya alight and head towards the club entrance.

The door manager spotted Nastiya as soon as she entered the mews. She was 
wearing a crimson sheath that clung to all her protuberances, and six-inch 
stiletto heels that put the fine muscles in her calves under tension. Her 
appearance stilled the clamour of the throng at the entrance to the club 
pleading to be allowed in. Their ranks parted and they watched in awed silence 
as she passed through. The door manager rushed forward to greet her and took 
her arm with an unctuous smile of welcome. He escorted her to the entrance, 
handed her over the threshold and told the girl at the box office, ‘The lady 
is a guest of the house. Make sure she gets the best available table.’

Watching from the back seat of the Q-car, Paddy O’Quinn worried, ‘I hope 
she is going to be all right. There is some queasy-making trash in that mob.’

Hector burst out laughing. ‘You have to be kidding, Paddy. The only person I 
feel sorry for is any bloke who tries to mess with that lady of yours.’

He started the engine and drove on another two miles to the Rabid Dog.

‘Okay, Paddy, this is your kennel. Keep your legs crossed and don’t take 
any rubber cheques.’ He watched Paddy slip the doorman a ten-pound note and 
disappear through the dark curtains that covered the entrance.

It was another mile back to the Fusion Fire. The club extended over two levels. 
Its façade was all floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows facing the road. 
Through the windows he could see that the interiors were brightly lit by 
revolving towers of myriad-colour strobe lights. The ceilings were clad with 
mirrored tiles that reflected the flashing lights and the figures of the 
dancers on the floors below. The dancers were packed as tightly as shoals of 
glittering tropical fish, driven by the booming pulse of the music into a 
savage frenzy.

He drove past slowly, parked on the next corner and walked back to the entrance 
of the club. He was wearing dark aviator glasses and a gold brocade Nehru 
jacket with cut-out sleeves that Nastiya had chosen for him. They had 
deliberately chosen outlandish costume to make themselves appear kinky and 
effete. Nobody would think they were storm-troopers and take fright. Hector 
paid a hundred pounds for a VIP table.

He sat at the table and looked around the huge room. He recognized it 
immediately as the background to one of the videos that Vicky Vusamazulu had 
shot of Aleutian on her iPhone. That gave him encouragement. If Aleutian had 
hung out here before, there was a stronger possibility that he might return 
here again.

Within twenty minutes he had five different young ladies approach him one after 
the other, to offer everything from a fifty-pound under-the-table blow job to a 
five-hundred-pound all-nighter. All of which he declined with thanks.

By five twenty in the morning the crowds on the dance floor had thinned, and 
there was still no sign of anyone who even vaguely resembled Aleutian. So he 
went down to the Q-car and drove to the Rabid Dog to pick up Paddy.

‘How did it go, old son?’ he asked as Paddy climbed into the seat beside 
him.

‘If I had smoked, sniffed and swallowed everything I was offered tonight I 
would be flying higher than the morning star up there.’

They drove on to the Portals of Paradise and when Nastiya appeared she looked 
as though she had spent the time in a beauty salon.

‘No luck, Queen of my Heart?’ Paddy enquired anxiously.

‘I could have made a fortune. One dear old man of about ninety offered me ten 
thousand pounds for just a look and no touch.’

‘You should have taken the offer,’ Paddy told her, and she gave him a level 
stare through eyes that were as frosty blue as a tundra sky. When they got back 
to No. 11 all three of them slept until noon.

The next night was a repetition of the first. Only the clientele in the clubs 
had changed.

On the third night Hector strolled into the bedlam of Fusion Fire a little 
after midnight. It was Saturday night and it was shoulder to shoulder on the 
dance floor. The volume of the music numbed the senses. The huge mirrored light 
balls suspended from the ceiling bounced in time to the pounding feet of the 
dancers below.

So as to blend into the scenery, Hector was wearing a black satin Spanish 
bolero jacket over a frilled white shirt and a black string tie. His toreador 
sequinned pants were skin tight. Once again this costume had been assembled for 
him by Nastiya. He seated himself at his usual table and a girl in a mini-skirt 
with a pretty pixie face and pouting lips, who he had never seen before, 
immediately plumped herself down on his lap.

‘You are so gorgeous I want to marry you,’ she told him. ‘You are rich, 
aren’t you?’

‘I am a multimillionaire,’ he told her gravely.

‘Oh my God!’ she said breathlessly. ‘I swear to God that you’ve just 
made me come.’

He found her really quite amusing. He laughed and glanced over her shoulder and 
looked straight at the dark sullen face that he remembered so well from 
Victoria Vusamazulu’s videos.

Aleutian was standing on the far side of the dance floor, at the top of the 
stairs that led down to the entrance lobby. He was with a girl who was looking 
up at him but her face was turned away from Hector. Aleutian was looking down 
at her patronizingly. Although the crowd swirled around the pair he stood a 
full head above any of them. This was how Hector had picked him out so readily. 
He stared at him for a few seconds only, making utterly certain he had the 
right man, but even that was too long.

If you stare intently at a wild animal in the jungle it will often sense your 
gaze and react to it. Aleutian was just that, a savage predator in his own 
domain. His eyes flashed up from the girl’s face and his gaze locked with 
Hector’s. He recognized Hector instantly. He whirled and darted away down the 
staircase.

Hector jumped to his feet, dumping the girl from his lap in a heap at his feet. 
He jumped over her and ran onto the dance floor and fought his way through the 
dancers to the head of the stairs down which Aleutian had disappeared.

The stairs were almost as crowded as the dance floor. When Hector reached the 
entrance door and burst through it into the street there was no sign of him. 
Hector checked the blind instinct to rush through the dark streets searching at 
random.

He thought of the girl Aleutian had been with. Perhaps he could find her. 
Perhaps she could point him to where Aleutian was holing up. He abandoned that 
idea in the same instant as it came to him. Fusion Fire was overflowing with 
dollies like her. He had not even seen her face. He would never recognize her 
in the pack. Anyway, she was probably a hooker that Aleutian had picked up this 
very same evening.

How did Aleutian get here? Car? Taxi? If so, he is already long gone. He was 
thinking furiously. Underground? Yes, of course!

He knew from his online research that the north bank entrance to Blackfriars 
station was perhaps four hundred yards from where he now stood. He started to 
run. He raced to the first corner and saw the entrance to the station at the 
end of the block ahead. The street was almost deserted at this hour. There was 
only a handful of late-night revellers making their way homeward. One of these 
was Aleutian. He was sprinting away from Hector towards the tube station. As 
Hector started in pursuit Aleutian reached the entrance and disappeared like a 
jack rabbit into its warren. Hector followed him into the entrance. He went 
down the stairs three at a time with his footsteps echoing in an empty tunnel. 
He reached the T-junction at the bottom. The left-hand tunnel was signposted 
Richmond and the right was signed Upminster. He had no way of telling which one 
Aleutian had chosen. At random, he started down the right-hand tunnel and then 
he heard a train rumbling in on the Richmond line. He spun around and raced in 
that direction. He came out on the landing and looked down on the platform. The 
train was already standing stationary and the doors were open. There was a 
small crowd of late-night commuters and revellers climbing aboard. Hector saw 
at once that his hunch had been good. Aleutian was pushing his way through the 
other passengers. Hector watched him clamber into one of the carriages.

Hector started down the last flight of stairs, but before he was halfway to the 
platform the doors closed and the train pulled away. As the carriages slid by, 
Hector saw Aleutian standing at one of the windows looking up at him. Hector 
reached for the pistol in its concealed shoulder holster. Then he checked 
himself. The angle and the range were extreme. Aleutian was closely surrounded 
by other passengers. Hector dared not take the risk of hitting one of them as 
the train accelerated away.

Aleutian knew he was safe. He grinned up at Hector. It was a sardonic grimace, 
filled with menace. Hector’s skin crawled. He was looking into the eyes of 
Hazel’s murderer. His legs trembled under him with the strength of his 
emotions. It took him a few seconds after the train had disappeared into the 
mouth of the tunnel before he could force himself to think dispassionately 
again.

He spun around and raced back the way he had come, but he knew that it would 
take at least ten minutes to reach the parked Q-car. The train was carrying 
Aleutian away at forty miles an hour. Aleutian’s lead was far too great for 
him to ever catch up, even in the Q-car. He had to phone ahead and get Paddy or 
Nastiya to head him off. But there were a dozen or more stops where Aleutian 
could jump off the train before it reached the terminal at Richmond. It 
wasn’t possible to cover them all.

But, he was missing something. He knew he was missing something as he stormed 
back up the tunnel to ground level.

Think! he exhorted himself. Lead with your brain and not your balls. Where is 
the bastard heading for?

He burst out of the tunnel and into the street before it hit him. It stopped 
him in his tracks. Then he reached for his phone and punched in Nastiya’s 
number. It rang interminably, but he held it to his ear as he raced on at top 
speed.

Vicky Vusamazulu is the key. He knew it with crystal clarity. I could almost 
see Aleutian making the connection. With the instinct of a fox he sensed 
immediately that he had been betrayed. He knew that the odds of me stumbling 
onto him in Fusion Fire by blind chance were astronomical. He knows that 
someone had put me onto him. He knows that Vicky is the only one who knew both 
of us. She was the only one who knew that he frequented Fusion Fire. It 
didn’t take much for him to work out that she is the only one who could have 
given me the lead. The odds are ten to one on that he is on his way to revenge 
himself on Vicky right this minute. Come on, Nazzy sweetheart. Answer your 
bloody phone.

‘Hector, where are you?’ Nastiya asked suddenly.

‘I have spooked Aleutian. He made a break, and got clean away from me. My 
best bet is he’s on his way to Vicky. You remember Vicky’s address, don’t 
you?’

‘Forty-seven Gardens Lane and the postcode is TW9 5LA. It’s about three 
hundred yards down the road from the Kew Gardens tube station.’ Nastiya’s 
reply was quick and sharp. She was a pro.

‘At this moment Aleutian is on a train heading directly for Kew Gardens. You 
are much closer than we are. You can get to Vicky long before we will ever make 
it. Take a cab. Paddy and I will back you up as soon as we can. Just make it 
fast, Nazzy. Your pal Vicky is a sitting duck, and that bastard is a killer.’ 
The phone went dead against his ear. Nastiya was always sparing with her words.

He dialled Paddy and spoke to him while he ran for the Q-car.

‘Paddy, wait for me outside the Rabid Dog. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, 
maybe less.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Aleutian showed up, but I made a right royal balls-up. He’s bolted and 
he’s running. Tell you more when I see you.’

Fifteen minutes later, Paddy whipped open the front door of the Q-car and 
jumped into the passenger seat before Hector came to a full halt. Hector hit 
the accelerator and powered away again.

‘Forty-seven Gardens Lane, TW9 5LA. That’s Vicky’s address. Punch it into 
the satnav, Paddy. I am damned sure that’s where Aleutian is headed.’

*

The insistent chimes of the front door of her apartment woke Vicky Vusamazulu. 
She sat up in bed groggily. She had taken a sleeping tablet. She glanced at the 
luminous dial of the bedside clock. It was almost two o’clock in the morning.

Thank God that Mrs Church is stone deaf. Vicky tried to knuckle the sleep out 
of her eyes. Mrs Church was her landlady. She lived upstairs and Vicky knew 
from experience that she switched off her hearing aid when she went to bed. She 
was such a strict and mean old harridan that Vicky was her only tenant.

The doorbell rang again. Vicky switched on the lights, threw back the 
bedclothes, swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She was 
wearing short pyjamas in a bright floral pattern. She stumbled into the passage 
and went down to the door at the end.

She checked that the two safety chains were fastened securely before she went 
up on tip toe to peer through the peephole. The visitor outside was standing 
with his back to her.

‘Who is it?’ she called irritably. He turned back to face her and she 
recognized him.

She gasped with shock and delight and she came fully awake. She had not even 
known that Aleutian was back in town.

‘Open the door, bitch,’ he said.

‘Aleutian! Oh God! Is it really you? I thought you were never coming back.’ 
She was so excited that she fumbled with the safety chains. ‘Wait! Don’t go 
away. It won’t take me a second. Wait, Aleutian, my darling.’

She got it open at last and ran out to embrace him, but he pushed her aside and 
strode into her apartment. He walked down the passage towards her bedroom 
without looking back at her. She shut the front door but did not waste time 
re-securing the safety chains. Then she ran after him.

‘I thought you were never coming back. I should never have doubted you. I 
knew you would keep your word. I missed you. I missed you so very much.’ She 
was babbling with excitement.

He was sitting on the bed. He was watching her with a strange expression on his 
face.

‘Have you been good while I was away?’

‘Oh yes, yes. I stayed at home every night waiting for you. I never even 
looked at another man. I love you so much.’

‘You are lying to me,’ he said in that special soft and deadly tone of his 
that made her tremble. ‘I think you have been a bad little bitch. I think 
that I am going to have to punish you.’

She knew this game so well that her nipples came erect under the thin stuff of 
her pyjama top.

‘Take off your pyjamas!’ he commanded and she pulled the top off over her 
head, bundled it and threw it onto the bed beside where he was sitting. Then 
she pulled her short panties down over her hips and let them fall around her 
ankles. She kicked them away, and stood naked before him.

‘Are you going to beat me, Aleutian?’ she asked fearfully and covered her 
pubes with cupped hands.

‘Take your hands away and come here.’ He crooked one finger at her and she 
came and stood close in front of him. ‘Open your legs, bitch.’

She moved her feet apart. He leaned forward and put his hand between her 
thighs. ‘Open wider!’ he ordered.

She could feel his finger wriggling into her and she wanted it so badly. She 
thrust her hips towards him and she felt him touch the mouth of her womb.

‘You are as slimy as a bucket of eels down there, you dirty bitch,’ he 
said. ‘But do you understand that I have to punish you, because you have been 
so bad?’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Master. You call me Master. Or have you forgotten?’ He did something with 
his finger that was so painful it made her whimper. It felt as though he had 
torn something inside her. Her eyes opened wide with the pain. But the pain 
felt so good that she was already close to the point of her first orgasm.

‘Yes, I understand, Master.’

He slid his finger out of her and held it up in front of her face. ‘Now, look 
what you have done, you dirty little whore. You have made my nice clean finger 
dirty with your filthy pussy.’

‘I am sorry, Master. I didn’t mean to do that.’

‘Get down on your knees,’ he ordered and she dropped down in front of him. 
He held out his finger towards her. ‘Suck it clean.’ She took it into her 
mouth. He forced it down her throat; so far that her shoulders heaved with the 
gagging reflex.

‘Admit it; you have been really bad while I was away, haven’t you?’

She made incoherent sounds of denial. Her face was swelling as she suffocated. 
He leaned back and pulled his finger out of her throat. She sobbed with relief, 
and her whole body convulsed with the effort as she struggled for air. She 
looked up at him and her eyes were bloodshot and streaming with tears.

He took his hand out from behind his back and she realized that he held a flick 
knife. He pressed the release button and the blade snapped out under her nose. 
It was seven inches long and bright as a sunbeam.

This was something new. He had never shown her this knife before. She tried to 
back away on her knees, but he picked up her pyjama top from the bed beside him 
and wound it around her neck and held her like a puppy on a leash.

‘You have been talking to people about me, haven’t you, bitch?’

‘No!’ she whispered and shook her head vehemently.

‘Don’t lie to me, you cow!’ He pricked her cheek with the point of the 
knife and she squealed with shock and pain.

‘Please don’t hurt me any more. I don’t like these games any more. I 
don’t want to play any more. Put that knife away please, Aleutian.’

‘This isn’t a game. You told Hector Cross about me, bitch.’

‘No, I did not.’ But despite the denial he saw the guilty realization dawn 
in her eyes. Her face contorted with terror.

‘Yes, you did. You told him where to find me,’ he laughed at her.

‘Please. You don’t understand.’ He ignored her protests, and his voice 
dropped to a kindly and reassuring tone.

‘Don’t worry; just do as I tell you and everything will be all right. Take 
your left ear and pull it out to one side as far as it will go.’ She stared 
at him in dumb incomprehension.

‘Do it, Victoria. Do it, if you really love me,’ he urged her, and still 
staring at him she lifted her hand and took the lobe of her ear between her two 
fingers and stretched it out.

‘That’s perfect,’ he said, and with a single quick stroke of the silver 
blade he sliced the ear off cleanly at the level of her scalp.

She shrieked once and then stared with fixed horror at the severed ear that she 
held between her fingers.

‘Now eat it. Put it in your mouth and swallow it,’ he told her softly.

The blood from her wound dripped onto her chest and ran down between her 
breasts. She ignored it and kept staring at her severed ear. He pricked her 
neck and she started and looked up at him.

‘Open your mouth,’ he told her and pricked her again. She opened her mouth.

‘Now put it in your mouth and swallow it.’

‘No!’ she said. ‘I am sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. Let me 
explain…’

He touched her eyebrow with the point of the knife. ‘Eat it or I will cut out 
your eyeballs, one at a time.’

She put her own ear into her mouth.

‘There you see. That’s not so bad. It probably tastes pretty good, 
doesn’t it?’ Her shoulders heaved again. ‘No. Don’t do that. Swallow 
it.’

She made a determined effort to obey. Her face and her throat contorted. At 
last she gulped it down. She was panting but she blurted out hoarsely, 
‘It’s gone. I swallowed it.’

‘That’s really cool. I am proud of you.’

‘Please, please stop now. Please don’t hurt me any more.’ She was weeping 
bitterly and still rolling her head from side to side.

‘Stop?’ he asked with mock surprise. ‘But we have only just gotten 
started. There is still something you want to tell me about, isn’t there, 
Vicky? You want to tell me who you have been talking to about me, don’t 
you?’

‘I never told anybody about you, I swear it on my mother’s grave.’ Tears 
were streaming down her face, and she was breathing in great shuddering gasps.

‘You are lying, Vicky. I have to make you eat your other ear.’ He forced 
her to her knees and he seized her remaining ear and stretched it out like a 
piece of rubber. He laid the blade against it, and Vicky screamed.

Nastiya heard that scream.

*

Nastiya picked up the cab at the front door of the Portals of Paradise. It was 
dropping off four giggling and squealing Polish girls.

She pushed one of the girls aside, jumped into the back seat and told the 
driver, ‘Forty-seven Gardens Lane and the postcode is TW9 5LA. It’s on the 
corner with Kew Gardens Road. It’s about three hundred yards down the road 
from the Kew Gardens tube station.’

‘I know where it is, love,’ the cabby said.

‘An extra fifty pounds if you can get me there in under a quarter of an hour, 
cabby.’

‘Buckle your seat belt, and have your fifty-pound note ready, lady,’ he 
told her. ‘Here we go.’

The streets were almost deserted and he drove very fast. He pulled into Gardens 
Lane with minutes to spare. Nastiya pushed two fifty-pound notes through the 
pay window and told him, ‘Keep the change, you earned it.’ She jumped from 
the taxi and ran across the road to No. 47. As she went through the gate into 
the tiny garden she heard Victoria scream. She kicked off her stiletto heels 
and dropped her sequin-covered bag. She pulled her pencil skirt up around her 
waist and ran at the door, building up momentum. She remembered from her last 
visit that the lock was old and flimsy. However, she also remembered the two 
substantial security chains, so she launched herself with both feet together 
and at the last moment kicked out like a mule.

To her astonishment the lock gave way readily and the door crashed back against 
the inner wall. Nastiya flew through it, feet first, into the passageway 
beyond. She rolled back onto her feet and was running again with barely any 
check in her charge.

She remembered the exact layout of the shabby little apartment. The living room 
and the kitchen were to the right. But she could see the light under the door 
of the single bedroom. She kicked it open and then dodged aside and flattened 
her body against the side wall. She glanced around the door jamb into the 
bedroom.

It was a charnel house. Blood splattered the pink linen of the single bed. It 
had been dashed across the walls and was pooling on the fluffy white rugs in 
the centre of the floor.

Vicky was on her feet facing her, but Nastiya could hardly recognize the girl. 
She was naked. Her ears had been hacked away. Blood cascaded from the fresh raw 
wounds. It ran down into her mouth and dyed her teeth crimson. Blood poured off 
her chin and ran down her body in sheets. The room stank of blood and vomit.

Nastiya recognized Aleutian at once from the video. He was standing behind 
Vicky. He had her in a headlock, pinning her helplessly. In his other fist he 
held the bloody knife with which he had committed the carnage. He was reaching 
around Vicky’s body and holding the point of the long blood-caked blade 
against her belly button. Using Vicky’s body as a shield, he was glaring at 
Nastiya over her shoulder.

‘Listen to me, Aleutian. Let Vicky go and you can walk away from this,’ 
Nastiya told him in a calm and reasonable tone of voice.

‘I don’t know who the hell you are, blondie, but I like what I see of you. 
I think I have got a better plan than yours. First I am going to finish what I 
started with this cow I have here. Then I am going to come after you, and when 
I catch you I’m going to give you the best fuck you have ever had in your 
life. Then I am going to kill you also, but very slowly. Now I am only going to 
do this once, so watch closely please.’

He drew the knife swiftly from side to side across Victoria’s naked belly, 
cutting down deeply through her skin and muscle and her stomach wall. Her 
intestines bulged from the wound. The knife had sliced through them and the 
contents spilled from them. Then he changed the angle of the blade and stabbed 
it up through her sternum.

Vicky’s eyes flew wide open, staring into eternity, as the blade pierced her 
heart. The breath rushed from her open mouth and then she sagged in 
Aleutian’s grip as she died. Even Nastiya was for an instant frozen by the 
brutality of it.

However, her dominating concern had switched from saving Vicky’s life to the 
knife in Aleutian’s hand. The knife gave Aleutian control.

She’d seen from the way he handled the weapon that he was a skilled knife 
fighter, probably the most dangerous she had ever faced. He knew how good he 
was, and he was supremely confident. He was enjoying himself. Obviously he 
thrived on the smell of blood and the stink of ripped bowels that filled the 
room. She knew she underestimated him at her peril.

She, on the other hand, was unarmed, barefooted and dressed in restricted 
clothing. The tiny bedroom was made even smaller by the bed in the centre. For 
her particular fighting style she needed space in which to manoeuvre, to 
retreat and feint. Most of all, she must have space in which to keep clear of 
that blade.

Clearly, Aleutian had reached the same conclusions, and he moved swiftly to 
restrict her movements even further. Still holding Vicky’s corpse in front of 
him as a shield, he tried to crowd Nastiya into a corner of the room. But she 
broke away, slipping around his left side, away from the knife.

Before he could swing his human shield around to block her, she had regained 
her position in the doorway. The door jambs on each side of her covered her 
flanks. She faced him again and fell into a fighting crouch with her hands held 
high and stiff as axe blades, crossed at the wrists.

‘Cool! You’ve been watching the Jackie Chan Kung Fu movies, blondie,’ he 
mocked her, and he lifted Vicky with her legs dangling and ran straight at 
Nastiya. He was attempting to force her into the passageway where he could get 
at her more readily.

Nastiya saw the opening; his feet were visible below Vicky’s dangling legs. 
Instead of retreating she ran to meet him. Just before they collided she 
launched herself feet first under Vicky’s legs and shot out her favourite 
mule kick. Both her feet landed solidly on Aleutian’s left ankle, exactly 
where she had aimed.

Clearly, she heard the bone and cartilage in his leg give with a snap. She felt 
a surge of triumph, she knew for certain he would go down and she would get her 
chance to take the knife from him.

Aleutian grunted with pain, but to her dismay he stayed upright. She 
back-flipped onto her feet and faced him again. However, before she could fully 
recover her balance he used Vicky like a battering ram and slammed her limp 
body into Nastiya with such force that she was hurled backwards through the 
doorway. She came up hard against the far wall of the passage.

Aleutian came after her. He was limping on his injured ankle, but nevertheless 
moved surprisingly fast. He was still holding Vicky’s mutilated body in front 
of him. He drove Nastiya back against the passage wall, and he stabbed at her 
face over Vicky’s shoulder. Nastiya grabbed his wrist, but it was slippery 
with blood and he twisted free, still holding the knife. She was against the 
wall and he was shoving Vicky into her, keeping her hedged in and off balance. 
Vicky’s head rolled about loosely on her shoulders. Her eyes were glazed and 
unseeing.

Aleutian stabbed at her face again and she ducked under the blade, losing sight 
of him for an instant. He let Vicky’s corpse drop, and Nastiya’s lower body 
was no longer shielded by it. With the speed of an adder he struck at her 
belly. Nastiya twisted violently aside to avoid the thrust, but the corpse was 
lying across her feet, inhibiting her movements. She felt the sting of the 
steel as it opened a long shallow cut across her hip. She tried to jump over 
the corpse and get into the open before he could strike again, but the rope of 
Vicky’s intestines wrapped around her ankle and she tripped. She went down on 
one knee and threw up her hand to counter the knife thrust that she knew must 
surely come, but instead Aleutian grabbed her wrist and dragged her face down 
on the floorboards. He put one knee in the small of her back to pin her while 
he swiftly readjusted his grip. Then he forced her to her knees and knelt 
behind her, holding her in a single-handed head lock. He put enough pressure on 
her larynx to prevent her calling out.

‘You are quite good, blondie,’ he commended her. ‘You know how to use 
yourself in a fight.’ He was breathing heavily and chuckling. ‘Now you get 
your chance to show me how good you are at the famous old doggy style.’

At that moment the front door of the apartment crashed back on its hinges, and 
Hector and Paddy burst through it into the passageway together. They paused for 
a moment to take in the scene.

Aleutian rose to his feet without losing his choke-hold on Nastiya. Using her 
body as a shield, he faced them.

‘Stay where you are,’ he warned them. ‘Come any closer and this slut gets 
it.’

He held the knife to Nastiya’s neck with the blade pressed up under her ear. 
He saw the pistol. Hector was holding it in a double-handed Weaver grip. He had 
taken up the classical gunfighter’s crouch; balanced on the balls of his feet 
with the pistol pointed at Aleutian’s forehead.

Aleutian ducked his head and tucked himself in closely behind Nastiya, offering 
a minimal target. He began to sway his head from side to side like a standing 
cobra to frustrate Hector’s aim.

‘Welcome, Mr Cross. It’s such a pleasure to see you again. Please accept my 
condolences on the recent loss of your lovely wife,’ he said.

It was as though a shutter flickered across Hector’s eyes and his vision 
seemed to glow red with the heat of his fury. He just managed to control it.

Once again his mind was working like a computer, calculating range and aiming 
point. The pistol sights were set to shoot one and a half inches high at 
twenty-five yards. This range was eight, maybe nine yards to target. He would 
have to compensate for the rising bullet. Aleutian was moving all the time, 
giving him only intermittent glimpses of his head.

‘You can take him, Heck,’ Paddy breathed as he crouched behind Hector’s 
shoulder. His words were only just audible.

Hector’s lips tightened into a hard straight line; he knew that the chances 
of pulling off the shot without touching Nastiya were about even money.

‘We can do a deal, Mr Cross,’ Aleutian said. ‘I know you have a car 
outside. You could not have gotten here so quickly without one. You give me the 
keys and I give you this piece of blonde pussy. Fair exchange?’

The weapon in Hector’s hand was unwavering. ‘Who gave you the contract on 
my wife?’ he asked.

‘That’s not the deal, Mr Cross.’

‘That’s the only deal, Aleutian.’

‘Look what I did to your friend Victoria. No ears and no guts. Please don’t 
annoy me.’

Hector’s eyes never even flickered towards Vicky’s mutilated corpse.

‘I want the name,’ he insisted.

‘And I want to go on living. No names.’

‘I can wait,’ Hector said.

‘I don’t think you can,’ Aleutian said. ‘Watch this.’ He brought his 
knife down behind Nastiya’s back and placed the point on her naked tricep, 
and then slowly he pushed the long blade cleanly through her arm. Nastiya’s 
face contorted with the pain as the point emerged from the front of her biceps.

‘It’s okay, Hector,’ she said but her voice was hoarse and her eyes were 
filled with agony.

‘Tough cookie!’ Aleutian acknowledged her stoicism, and jerked the blade 
out of her flesh. ‘Next one goes through her leg.’ He stabbed the blade 
through her thigh. When he pulled it out dark blood spilled from the wound and 
pattered onto the floor.

‘Take him, Heck,’ Paddy demanded.

‘Hazel!’ With a single word, Hector explained his reluctance to fire.

‘You can’t save Hazel, but you can save Nazzy. Take him, please.’ Now 
Paddy was pleading, and Hector had never heard him plead before. But never 
before had Paddy been forced to watch helplessly as the woman he adored was cut 
to ribbons.

Hector knew he had to take the shot. He also knew that it would be the most 
crucial shot he ever fired, and the consequences should he miss.

However, the pistol in his hands was a very special weapon. Dave Imbiss had 
persuaded a military master-armourer to work on it for him. First the armourer 
had obliterated the serial numbers, so there could be no paper trail linking 
the pistol to Hector. He had hand-polished the chamber to accept the rounds so 
cleanly that there was no possibility of a jam. He had put the barrel through a 
classified machine in the US Defense Sniper Division that rendered the rifling 
and lands mirror perfect. The cartridges were also part of a specially prepared 
batch. The ballistics were perfect; every bullet would rotate through the 
barrel and fly to the target on an identical trajectory, with no wobble or roll 
and almost zero deflection. Finally, the crude iron sights had been replaced 
with state-of-the-art optics. The end result was that its accuracy was fined 
down to thousandths of an inch. Hector had spent so many hours on the practice 
range with it that the pistol was now almost an extension of his own body.

Moreover, Aleutian was a wild animal at bay and he was on the cusp of panic. He 
was no longer thinking like the cold-blooded killer he really was. He was 
making a little mistake. He was beginning to sway his head to a rhythm, moving 
it from side to side with the regularity of a metronome. Aleutian was showing 
Hector one eye and an inch and a half of the right-hand side of his head at 
intervals of two seconds. Hector would have to let his bullet pass a millimetre 
clear of Nastiya’s cheek.

He drew a long slow breath and then let it out just as slowly. He lined up on 
the space into which he anticipated he would fire. His pressure on the trigger 
was a mere feather off the point of release. His concentration was so intense 
that for him everything seemed to slow down and go very still and quiet. The 
pistol went off of its own accord. It seemed to Hector that a force beyond his 
own volition had made the shot.

He saw a lock of Nastiya’s golden hair snipped off cleanly by the bullet, and 
her ear flicked as the turbulence of the passing shot caught it, and then he 
saw Aleutian’s right eye explode in a burst of pale jelly as the bullet 
passed through. The back of his skull blew out. The pale matter of his brains 
splashed across the wall of the passage, and he went down hard and lay on his 
back. His heels drummed spasmodically on the wooden floor.

‘We must get tourniquets on those wounds right away, but don’t touch 
anything in the room which will leave fingerprints!’ Hector shouted at Paddy 
as he rushed forward. Nastiya took a pace towards him and then fell forward as 
her damaged leg collapsed under her weight. Paddy caught her and lowered her 
gently to the floor.

Hector moved swiftly to the spot were Aleutian had been standing. He did not 
have to concern himself too much with fingerprints on the expended cartridge 
cases. The only fingerprints of his were on the external parts of the weapon. 
He pulled a cotton bandanna from his pocket and wiped the pistol meticulously, 
then used the cloth as a glove. He went to where Aleutian’s corpse lay on its 
back. Hector had noted his grip on the handle of the knife so he knew that he 
had been right-handed. He knelt beside his corpse, picked up his limp right 
hand and folded his fingers around the hand grip and pressed them onto the 
blued steel. Then he did the same with Aleutian’s left hand on the slide. He 
paused for a few seconds to examine the Maalik tattoo on the dead man’s 
wrist, and grimaced with anger. Kneeling behind Aleutian with an arm under his 
armpits he stood up slowly, lifting the corpse into a standing position.

‘Keep your head down, Paddy,’ he warned. ‘I’m going to let another one 
off.’ He forced Aleutian’s dead finger onto the trigger. The pistol fired 
and the bullet smacked into the passage wall beside the front door.

Then he released his grip on Aleutian’s dead body and let it fall to the 
floor under its own weight.

He stood for a few seconds reviewing the scene. The angles were right. 
Aleutian’s right hand was now covered with burnt gun-powder. When the police 
forensic team applied the paraffin test they would get a positive. His body had 
fallen in a natural attitude, with the knife that he had used on Vicky under 
him. It was all convincing.

He turned away from the body and squatted beside Paddy as he worked on 
Nastiya’s leg. Paddy had taken down a length of sash cord from the window in 
the end wall of the passage. He tied the cord high up around Nastiya’s thigh 
above the wound. Now he was twisting it tight. The cord gradually cut into her 
flesh and the bleeding from the wound was pinching off. Hector knelt beside him 
and used his bandanna as a tourniquet on her arm.

‘You saved her life. I don’t know how to thank you, Heck.’ Paddy spoke 
without looking up.

‘Then don’t!’ Hector said.

‘I can do better than my stupid husband,’ Nastiya told Hector. ‘Soon as I 
can stand up I am going to give you a big fat kiss.’ She was very pale, her 
voice hoarse, but she smiled.

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he warned her.

‘How come you made Aleutian fire a second shot even after he was dead?’ 
Paddy asked.

‘To put burnt powder on his hands and his fingerprints on the pistol,’ 
Hector told him.

‘What are the police going to think when they find this big mess that we have 
made?’ Nastiya asked.

‘We hope they are going to think that Aleutian killed Vicky with the knife 
after a lover’s tiff, then in remorse and fear of the consequences he shot 
himself.’

‘It took him two shots?’ Paddy asked incredulously. ‘His aim must have 
been a bit wild!’

‘Suicides often fire a clearing shot first, to check the gun and bolster 
their courage before they make the killing shot,’ Hector explained. ‘I 
think we have cleared our tracks. We have left nothing here that the boys in 
blue can trace back to us. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

Nastiya made no sound as Paddy picked her up and carried her out through the 
front door. Hector stood up and walked back to where Vicky Vusamazulu lay. Even 
to one accustomed to death in all its most hideous aspects, this mutilation was 
sickening. He gave her a few seconds of silent respect.

‘Silly little thing. But she didn’t deserve to go out like this.’

Then he went to Aleutian and stood over him. With his hands thrust into his 
pockets, he stared down at the ruined head. The single remaining eye stared 
back at him. Anger and dismay washed over him in alternating waves. Anger for 
what this man had done to Hazel; dismay for the fact that his death had wiped 
out the trail that might have led Hector to the lair of the ultimate Beast.

Now he knew he was staring at the veritable mother of all dead ends. He turned 
away and followed Paddy out to where the Q-car was parked. The street was 
deserted.

Hector opened the driver’s door and slipped behind the wheel of the Q-car. 
Paddy was in the back seat holding Nastiya. She was silent and pale. Hector 
drove away without revving the engine. As they passed the gates to the 
Botanical Gardens, Hector spoke again.

‘Well, it looks like another lucky one. We’ve got away clean except for 
Nazzy. How are you bearing up, tsarina?’

‘I’ve been worse, but I have also been a lot better,’ she said. ‘Where 
are we going?’

‘We are going to see a man that Paddy and I both know rather well,’ Hector 
told her, as he passed his iPhone back over his shoulder. ‘Grab my phone, 
Paddy. You will find Doc Hogan in my contacts list. Tell him we are on our way. 
We will be with him in about an hour and a half.’

Doc Hogan had been the Royal Medical Corps doctor attached to the SAS regiment 
in which Hector had served. When he retired he had settled down on the family 
farm in Hampshire. However, behind the country gentry façade he was still in 
the practice of medicine, albeit unofficially and on the quiet. His speciality 
was trauma management. His small and select list of patients were all ex-army 
friends and comrades who had suffered minor misadventures such as impregnating 
a lady who was not their wife, or getting themselves stabbed, or carelessly 
standing in the way of a flying bullet.

Paddy and Nastiya stayed with Doc Hogan as his guests for ten days, before he 
allowed her to fly down to Abu Zara in the Bannock Oil jet to complete her 
recuperation.

The demise of Aleutian and Vicky Vusamazulu hardly raised a ripple of interest. 
It was reported as a domestic violence on the back pages of a local news-sheet, 
but it never made it to the TV news channels or the national radio broadcasts.

*

Agatha had accepted Hector’s offer of permanent employment and was now his 
chief personal assistant, but it had tested his powers of persuasion to talk 
her into accepting an increase in her salary.

‘I don’t know what I would do with all that money, Mr Cross.’

‘You are a clever girl, Agatha. You’ll think of something,’ he assured 
her. ‘However, I’m going to need you in Abu Zara, where you will be close 
at hand to help me, with business and Catherine Cayla. We may return to London 
once the Trust has sold Number Eleven and we can set up alternative lodgings.’

Apart from the fact that she was such a dedicated and experienced secretary, 
she was the world’s living expert on that period of Hazel’s life prior to 
Hector’s appearance on her horizon. Every day Hector was involving her more 
intimately in the research that he was carrying out on her accumulated records 
to try to identify the hidden enemy in Hazel’s past. In this, Agatha’s 
experienced advice was invaluable.

During one of their long and probing discussions of the killer’s identity, it 
was Agatha who reminded him of the existence of Henry Bannock’s stepson, the 
son of the wife who had preceded Hazel in the role. His name was Carl and at 
first Henry had welcomed him into his family with open arms. He had provided 
him with the finest education and when he left college had given him a highly 
paid job at Bannock Oil. However, their relationship had exploded in a terrible 
family scandal which had affected Henry Bannock deeply.

‘What was it all about, Agatha?’ Hector asked her. ‘I heard the rumours 
when I came to work for Bannock Oil. But I never learned any of the details.’

‘Very few people did. It was long before my time. But I only know that Mr 
Bannock was deeply ashamed of the whole business. He never allowed anybody ever 
to talk about it in the Bannock household. There was no reference to it in any 
of his personal records; he must have expunged them all. It was as though it 
had never happened. I heard that Carl Bannock was released from prison after 
serving a long sentence. But then he simply disappeared, until after Mr Bannock 
died and Hazel took over his job as CEO. Then Carl popped up again out of 
nowhere, and started hounding Hazel. I don’t know what he was on about, but I 
think he was trying to blackmail her. I think he forced her to pay him out a 
large sum of money, because he suddenly disappeared again and I haven’t heard 
anything of him since then. Did Hazel ever speak of him to you?’

‘Never. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell. I knew there was a deep and 
dark family secret and I didn’t want to rake up old and hurtful things 
connected to Henry Bannock, who she revered,’ Hector admitted. ‘It was as 
if this Carl fellow never existed.’

‘In any event I cannot see how Carl could be implicated in Hazel’s murder. 
What would he stand to gain by killing her, or by having her killed? He had 
already gotten all the money out of her that he could.’

‘I can’t see any motive either, apart from sheer vindictiveness. But if 
Hazel had paid him off, as you suggest, why would he come back all these years 
later to murder her? I agree it doesn’t make sense. I think we must look for 
her killer elsewhere. But we will bear Master Carl Bannock in mind, although I 
think he is pretty far down the line of possible suspects.’

*

As soon as they were settled back in Seascape Mansions, Hector and Agatha 
started drawing up a list of possible villains, but there had been so many 
hostile people in Hazel’s life that the list expanded until it threatened to 
stretch out to unwieldy proportions. It was impossible for Hector to travel 
back and forth across the globe to follow up every lead and run down every 
possible culprit. So Agatha had to find a reputable private detective in each 
country where Hazel’s erstwhile enemies were now scattered. Hector employed 
them to carry out the local search. Only when the report from the hired 
detective was hot and promising would Hector fly out to follow up the blood 
spoor in person.

One such journey was to Colombia to investigate a notorious local cocaine and 
oil baron who had once had dealings with Bannock Oil, dealings which had ended 
in mutual recriminations and anger. Agatha recalled that Señor Bartolo Julio 
Alvarez had sent death threats and referred in public to Hazel Bannock as a 
Yanqui putain de bordel de merde.

To Hector the meaning of this was obscure but Agatha explained with relish that 
it meant something along the lines of, ‘An American lady of easy virtue who 
plies her trade from a house of ill repute built from excrement.’

‘That’s very unflattering,’ Hector agreed. ‘Best I go down there to 
reason with him.’

When Hector arrived in Bogotá he found that he had just missed by a week the 
opportunity to attend Señor Alvarez’s funeral. He had been sent to his 
celestial reward by six rounds from a Scorpion SA vz. 61 submachine gun fired 
at a range of two feet into the back of his skull by a trusted bodyguard who, 
it seemed, had recently transferred his allegiance to the head of a rival 
cocaine syndicate.

When Hector flew back to Abu Zara he was more fortunate. Nastiya was now 
sufficiently recovered from her injuries to be with Paddy to meet Hector at the 
airport.

‘You’ll never guess what has happened,’ Nastiya told him as they embraced.

‘Whatever it is, it’s got to be good,’ Hector replied. ‘You are 
grinning like an idiot.’

‘Catherine Cayla is crawling!’

‘She’s what?’

‘Crawling! You know, hands and knees. We are talking about the next Olympics 
already,’ Nastiya told him with pride.

‘Congratulations, Heck!’ Paddy laughed.

‘Thank you, Padraig. Clearly, my daughter is an infant prodigy.’ He spoke 
in tones of awe. ‘I have to see this.’

‘Your reception committee is anxiously awaiting your arrival at Seascape 
Mansions. I warn you that the preparations have been quite extensive,’ Paddy 
told him.

They rode up in the private elevator and when the doors opened the entire 
household was drawn up in the entrance lobby, under an elaborate banner that 
had been strung from one wall to the other. The slogan in gold glitter paint 
read WELCOME HOME, DADDY!

At the rear of the lobby were the ranks of house servants. The chefs were 
wearing spotless whites with their traditional tall hats. The uniforms of the 
lesser members of staff were clean and freshly ironed, and maids wore frilled 
white aprons over their navy blues. In front of them were the security 
operatives in their number-one dress uniforms, shining belt buckles and highly 
polished boots. In the forefront were the three nursemaids. Bonnie was front 
stage centre, and in her arms she held Catherine Cayla Bannock-Cross.

Catherine was dressed in an embroidered pink romper suit, and enough of her 
fluffy blonde hair had been scraped together to support an enormous pink bow.

The assembly burst into applause as Hector stepped out of the elevator. 
Catherine swivelled her head, looking around at them in astonishment, and then 
her eyes came back to Hector as he approached. Hector saw that her eyes had 
changed colour. They were a deeper and brighter shade of blue. They were 
Hazel’s eyes. Their gaze was steady and focussed. Hector realized that she 
was actually seeing him, possibly for the first time.

Hector stopped in front of her and she thrust her thumb into her mouth and 
regarded him solemnly.

‘You are very beautiful,’ he told her. ‘You are as beautiful as your 
mother.’

He held out his arms towards her and he smiled.

‘May I hold you, please?’

He knew she was still too young to remember or recognize him. They had told him 
that it would only happen when she was one year old. But he kept smiling and 
looking into her eyes.

He saw her thoughts coming to the surface like pretty little fish in a deep 
blue pond. Suddenly she echoed his smile and held both her arms towards him, 
leaning forward in Bonnie’s arms and bouncing so violently that the nurse 
almost lost her grip.

Stone the experts! Hector thought joyfully. She does so recognize me!

He took her up, and she sat erect in the curve of his arm, balancing herself 
easily. She was light and soft and she smelled like fresh warm milk.

He kissed the top of her head and she said clearly, ‘Ba! Ba!’

‘We mean Dada.’ Bonnie supplied the translation. ‘We have been working on 
it, but it’s a rather difficult word for us.’

He carried Catherine to her nursery and her three nurses trooped after them. He 
placed her in the centre of the floor, and backed away to the door.

‘Okay, you little beauty,’ he said to her. ‘Let’s see you crawl.’ He 
clapped his hands. ‘Come, Cathy. Come to Baba, my baby!’

She rolled over onto her belly and then came up on her hands and knees and shot 
towards him at a flying crawl. When she reached him she grabbed a double 
handful of his trouser leg and tried to haul herself to her feet. She flopped 
back on her nappy-cushioned bottom, and all three nurses burst into excited 
cries of, ‘Did you see that?’

‘She tried to stand on her two feet!’

‘She’s never done that before!’

It was lunchtime and Hector played his part by spooning a mush of minced 
chicken and pumpkin into her mouth. Most of this was returned. It dribbled down 
her chin and splattered her bib and Hector’s shirt front. As she swallowed 
the last spoonful her eyes closed, her chin fell on her chest and she was 
asleep where she sat.

Hector worked out in the gymnasium for two hours while Catherine took her nap, 
then he changed into his running shoes and retrieved Catherine’s papoose and 
went to find her. When she saw the papoose she kicked her legs and uttered 
sounds of strongest approval.

They ran along the almost deserted beachfront, followed at a discreet distance 
by two of Dave Imbiss’s best men. Hector sang to her and pulled faces that 
made her laugh. She explored his face. She stuck her chubby pink fingers into 
his mouth to see where the strange sounds were coming from, and she tried to 
emulate them. She blew spit bubbles and chortled.

She soothed the loneliness. It no longer hurt so badly when he thought of Hazel.

Too soon he had to return to London.

*

Against all the odds, the estate agent had found a buyer for No. 11. Ronnie 
Bunter on behalf of the trustees asked Hector to oversee the takeover. So he 
had to be there when the removals company packed up the contents of the huge 
house. The purchaser was an Indian steel magnate. He was giving it to one of 
his sons as a wedding present. Hector was able to unload most of the furniture 
from the great house onto them. He sent the antiques and artwork that Hazel had 
accumulated to Sotheby’s to be sold at auction, and felt a sense of almost 
physical relief as the last heavily laden removal van pulled away down the 
driveway.

The astute estate agent had a list of a dozen replacements for No. 11 at hand. 
He took Hector on a viewing tour. Third on the list was a lovely mews house in 
Mayfair. It had been completely renovated, and the paint had hardly dried on 
the walls. It comprised all the usual offices together with four large bedroom 
suites, underground garaging for three cars and accommodation for five servants 
in the basement. It took Hector forty-five minutes to make the decision to buy 
it.

As he signed the documentation for No. 4 Lowndes Mews, Mayfair, he had already 
chosen a name for his and Catherine’s new home: ‘The Cross Roads’. And it 
occupied a little more than twenty per cent of the floor area of the Belgravia 
mansion.

He called in his usual firm of interior designers and gave them a deadline of 
six weeks to have the property completely furnished and ready for occupation. 
He began to feel that at last he had succeeded in putting the past behind him 
and he was ready to start living his own life afresh.

*

The trial at the Old Bailey of the two thugs who had fire-bombed Brandon Hall 
was set down for a few weeks later. It lasted six days.

Between them, Nastiya, Paddy and Hector spent two of those days on the witness 
stand, and their combined testimony combined with that of Paul Stowe, the 
gamekeeper, was overwhelming.

The jury returned from their deliberations in only two and a half hours with a 
‘guilty on all counts’ verdict.

When the list of previous convictions was read out to the judge, he brought the 
full might of the law to bear on the accused.

He sentenced them each to twenty-two years’ detention, and ordered that they 
must serve a minimum of nineteen years of their sentences.

They had attempted to burn Catherine Cayla and Hector felt only partially 
mollified by the severity of the sentence. He consoled himself with the thought 
that, lacking the death sentence, it was about as steep as the feeble current 
laws allowed.

*

When the three of them flew back to Abu Zara, Paul Stowe went with them at 
Hector’s invitation. He no longer needed a head keeper at Brandon Hall, but 
Paul was too good a man to lose so Hector had found a new job for him at Cross 
Bow Security.

Hector was able to devote himself to Catherine and to following up the paper 
trail that he hoped might eventually lead him and Agatha to the shadowy 
assassin.

However, doubts were rising in the recesses of his mind. The list of suspects 
was dwindling rapidly as the negative reports came in from his field 
operatives. He began to experience bouts of helplessness and inadequacy. Those 
were sensations to which he was unaccustomed.

He tried to fight off these swings in mood by heavy physical exercise and hours 
spent on the firing range. He also had the distraction of having to fly to the 
US for the annual general meeting of Bannock Oil, Inc., of which he was still a 
director.

Then news came from his interior decorators in London that they had completed 
the refurbishment of The Cross Roads in Lowndes Mews only five days past the 
deadline he had set for them.

With relief he returned to the bustle and excitement of London.

*

The interior decorator and two of his assistants showed Hector over The Cross 
Roads. It was complete in every detail. The dominant colour scheme Hector had 
chosen was light blues and yellows, with shades of brown as counterpoints. It 
was welcoming, functional and masculine.

His carefully selected team of domestic servants from No. 11 and Brandon Hall 
were already in occupation of the servants’ quarters. Cynthia, the chef, was 
in the kitchen, busy with her pots and pans.

A new Bentley Continental and a brand-new Range Rover were parked in the 
underground garage, with their pristine bodywork gleaming.

The bar and the wine cellar were stocked with his favourite wines and liquors.

In his study the lighting was easy on the eyes and his computer was online.

The master bedroom was a work of art, with an emperor-size bed. The bed was 
made up with his favourite silk duvets. There was a gleaming white-tiled 
boy’s en suite bathroom, and a soft-pink girl’s bathroom with, naturally 
enough, a bidet. His suits and shirts were ironed and hanging in the master 
dressing room. His shoes were on the racks and polished to a high gloss.

Across the passage was Catherine’s nursery suite.

Before Hector moved in he had Dave Imbiss fly out from Abu Zara with his box of 
electronic tricks. Dave swept the house from the basement to the roof loft and 
declared that it was free of bugging devices or any other nastiness.

He had decided that in future he would live between The Cross Roads in London 
and Seascape Mansions in Abu Zara, spending ten alternate days in each. That 
way he could indulge in both the excitement of the metropolis and the 
tranquillity of the desert kingdom.

The first evening Hector was in residence in The Cross Roads he invited three 
of his old comrades-in-arms from his SAS days and their spouses to dine with 
him. It was a convivial evening and he only fell into bed well after midnight.

*

The next morning as he stepped out of the shower his mobile phone rang. He 
dried his right hand on the towel, flicked the water from his sodden hair and 
picked up his phone from the top of the washstand.

‘Cross!’ he barked into it. His head was still paining him a little from 
the previous evening’s jollifications.

‘Oh, I do hope I am not disturbing you, Mr Cross?’ a woman’s voice said.

‘Jo?’ he asked cautiously. ‘It is Jo Stanley, is it not? Or should I have 
said Miss Stanley?’ He knew it was her, of course. For almost a year now he 
had been aware of the musical strains of her voice echoing softly in the 
backwaters of his memory.

‘Jo sounds better to me than your second choice, Hector.’

‘This is a surprise. Where are you? You’re not in England by any strange 
chance, are you?’

‘Yes, I’m in London. I got in fairly late last night.’

‘Are you staying at the Ritz, as before?’

‘Goodness gracious, no!’ He smiled when she said that. It was so 
old-fashioned. ‘I can’t afford that kind of extravagance.’

‘You can if you send the bill to Ronnie Bunter,’ he suggested.

‘I don’t work for Mr Bunter any longer,’ she replied, and it caught him 
off balance.

‘Then, who are you working for?’

‘To use the well-travelled euphemism, I am currently between jobs.’ Again 
she had him stumped.

‘So what are you doing in London Town?’

‘I came to see you, Hector.’

‘I cannot bring myself to believe that. Why me?’

‘It’s complicated. Besides, there are better and safer ways to discuss it 
than over the telephone.’

‘Your place or mine?’ he asked, and she laughed again. It was a sound that 
pleased him.

‘Would it sound forward if I said yours?’

‘We’ll never get anywhere if we don’t move forward. Where can I find you? 
Where are you staying?’

‘In a rather cute little hotel with a cute name, just at the top end of 
Chelsea Green.’

‘What’s the name?’

‘It’s called My Hotel.’

‘Okay, I know it. I’ll pick you up at the front entrance in forty-five 
minutes. I’ll be driving a—’

‘You’ll be driving a silver Bentley with licence plates CRO 55, am I 
correct?’

‘An inspired guess, Miss Stanley,’ he chuckled. ‘But that was my old 
jalopy. The new banger is black. However, the number plates are the same.’

‘Goodness gracious! Only the angels can understand men and their motors.’

*

Jo was standing outside the hotel entrance, wearing denim jeans and a navy 
windcheater over a roll-neck white cable-stitch jersey, and she was carrying a 
leather briefcase. She had changed her hairstyle; now it was bobbed and 
fringed. It suited her even better. It made her neck seem longer and more 
swanlike. He had forgotten how tall and elegant she really was, even in denim 
pants.

When he reached across and opened the passenger door for her, she slipped into 
the seat and fastened her seat belt before she turned to face him.

‘I don’t have to ask how you are. You are looking very well, Hector.’

‘Thank you, and you are looking pretty good yourself, Jo. Welcome back to 
London.’

‘How is Catherine Cayla?’

‘Now you have pressed the right button. I could go on about her all day. 
Catherine Cayla is fifty leagues beyond gorgeous.’

‘Never mind the small print; just give me the headlines.’

‘She has blue eyes and already she can crawl. She can even say Dada, however 
she pronounces it Baba, which proves to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that 
she is a prodigy.’

‘Do you think I will ever get to meet her?’

‘Now that is a rare and beautiful thought.’

After they’d parked in the cobbled mews outside The Cross Roads he carried 
her briefcase to the house and then ushered her into the entrance lobby. She 
looked around at the sweeping circular staircase and the open doors into the 
sitting room.

‘Nice,’ she approved. ‘Very nice. Beautiful taste, Hector. Is that a real 
Paul Gauguin?’ She indicated the large oil on the facing wall of the sitting 
room.

‘I wish! Hazel had her entire art collection copied, so she could keep the 
originals in safe storage without paying iniquitous amounts of insurance on it. 
I am sure you will recall that the originals all belonged to the Trust. I kept 
this copy in memory of Hazel.’ He surprised himself with how easily he could 
now speak of Hazel, with pleasure rather than pain.

He set down her briefcase and helped her to divest herself of her jacket. 
Standing close to her, he remembered her perfume from their first meeting. It 
was Chanel No. 22 and it suited her perfectly.

‘If you are agreeable, we can work in my study. I presume we came here to 
work rather than to admire my fake masterpieces?’

She laughed softly. ‘You presume correctly.’ She liked the way he readily 
admitted that some of his paintings were copies. It was proof of what she had 
suspected when she first met him. He was straight down the middle, without side 
or pretence. A man that a woman could trust, and that bad men should walk wide 
of.

He took her elbow to assist her up the stairs. His study was very masculine. 
But she had never expected such a large collection of books. The floor was 
covered with Persian carpets in pleasing colours and patterns. His carved teak 
desk dominated the large room. On the facing wall was an oil portrait of Hazel. 
She was standing in a golden wheat field, holding a wide-brimmed straw hat in 
one hand. With the other hand she was shading her eyes and laughing. Her hair 
was darker gold than the wheat, blowing in the wind. Jo dropped her eyes; she 
felt a strange emotion that she could not define. She was not sure whether it 
was envy or admiration or pity.

Hector placed her briefcase on the long antique library table, and then patted 
the buttoned-leather chair. ‘This is the most comfortable seat in the room.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, but instead of sitting immediately she wandered 
along his bookcase looking at his collection.

‘Can I get you something to eat or drink?’ he asked.

‘I would die for a cup of coffee.’

‘Dying is not called for,’ he told her, and went to the Nespresso coffee 
machine that was concealed behind an antique Chinese screen in the corner.

‘I don’t like to let anybody else brew for me,’ he explained. ‘Not even 
Cynthia, my chef.’

At last she took the seat he had offered her, and he placed the porcelain on 
the table beside her. He went to his own chair behind the desk.

‘How secure are we here? We have some highly sensitive issues to discuss,’ 
she asked quietly.

‘You don’t have to worry, Jo. I had a thorough check run on the entire 
building by somebody I trust implicitly.’

‘Sorry I had to ask. I know you are a pro, Hector.’ He inclined his head to 
acknowledge the apology, and she went on. ‘The whole way across the Atlantic 
I have been pondering how best to explain this all to you. I decided the only 
way was to start at the beginning.’

‘That sounds logical to me,’ he agreed.

‘That’s why I am going to start at the end.’

‘When I think about it, that also sounds very logical, but only if you are a 
woman, of course.’ She ignored the sarcasm. Her expression began to change. 
The animation and flippancy faded away. Her lovely eyes filled with shadows.

He wanted desperately to help her, but he realized that the best way to do that 
was to remain silent and listen. She spoke at last.

‘Ronald Bunter is a fine lawyer and an honest and noble man but, as the head 
trustee of the Henry Bannock Family Trust, he has been faced with a 
soul-destroying decision. He has had to decide which he must betray: his 
professional honour or the lives of innocents that have been given into his 
keeping.’

She broke off and he knew with an intuitive flash that she had been faced with 
the same dreadful choice.

Then she sighed and it was a harrowing sound. She laid her hand on her 
briefcase and said, ‘In here I have a digital copy of the Henry Bannock 
Family Trust Deed. I stole it from the law firm to which I had sworn my fealty. 
Ronald Bunter gave me the duplicate keys and the codes so that I was able to 
enter the strongroom while the building was deserted and he shielded me from 
discovery. He was my accomplice. We did not commit this act without long and 
deep discussion and soul searching. But in the end we decided that justice must 
take precedence over the strict letter of the law. That is something almost 
impossible for a lawyer to accept. Nevertheless, when I had finished what I had 
set out to do I felt it was my duty to my God and my own self-esteem to resign 
from the firm whose trust I had so woefully betrayed.’

Hector realized that he had been holding his breath as he listened to her. Now 
he let it out in a long soft sigh, and then he said, ‘If you did this for me, 
I cannot let you do it. The sacrifice is too great.’

‘I have done it,’ she said. ‘I cannot go back on it now. It’s too late. 
Besides which it is the right decision. I know that it’s the right thing. 
Please don’t argue. This is my gift to you and Catherine Cayla.’

‘When you explain it that way I have no choice. I must accept it. Thank you, 
Jo. You will not find us ungrateful.’

‘I know that.’ She dropped her eyes and looked at her hands, which she was 
holding in her lap. When she looked up at him again she had regained complete 
control of her emotions.

‘The Trust Deed that Henry Bannock put together is a three-hundred-page 
monstrosity. It would take you an age to wade through it, because you would 
drop off to sleep every two or three pages.’

She opened her briefcase and took out two small USB flash drives. She balanced 
them in the palm of her hand, as though she was reluctant to hand them over.

‘So, what I have done for you is to prepare a digital copy of the actual 
Trust Deed.’ She placed one of the flash drives on his desk in front of him. 
‘Then on this second drive I have set out the background and history that led 
up to the formation of the trust that Henry Bannock created; then to the chain 
reaction that this set in motion. With Ronnie Bunter’s full cooperation I 
think that I have been able to put the facts into some sort of logical and 
cohesive order, which is also readable. I suppose I must have always had a 
deep-rooted ambition to be an author, because I found myself deeply involved in 
the writing of it.’ She smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘For what it’s worth, 
I offer to you my first attempt at narrative literature. It is not a novel or 
even a novelette, because everything it contains is factual.’

She stood up and placed the second flash drive beside the first on the desk in 
front of him. Hector picked it up and examined it curiously. Jo returned to her 
seat and watched him. He leaned across his desk and plugged the USB drive into 
his desktop computer.

‘It’s formatted in Microsoft Word,’ she said.

‘It’s opening without any hassle,’ he told her. ‘But now it’s asking 
for a password.’

‘It’s poisonseed7805,’ she told him. ‘All lower case. All one word.’

‘That’s done it. Here we go. It’s opening. “Karl Pieter Kurtmeyer: The 
Poisoned Seed”.’ He read aloud the title from the heading of the document.

‘I hope you find the contents of more interest than the title suggests,’ Jo 
said.

‘I am going to start reading it immediately, but it looks as though it will 
take me a good few hours, maybe even days. Is there something you can do for 
your own entertainment? Would you like to read a book or watch TV, or go out 
sightseeing or shopping? London is a fun town.’

‘I am shattered by jetlag.’ She hid her yawn behind her fingers. ‘It was 
a horrendous red-eye flight in tourist class. What with the turbulence and my 
obese neighbour snoring like a rampaging lioness and overflowing from her seat 
into mine, I slept hardly a wink.’

‘You poor girl!’ He stood up. ‘Never mind. Your problem is easily solved. 
Follow me.’ He led her up to the guest suite. When she saw the bed she 
smiled. ‘I have seen polo fields smaller than this.’

She was equally impressed with the bathroom. He led her back into the main 
bedroom and told her, ‘The dressing gowns are in the wardrobe. Take your 
pick, then lock the door and say farewell to this cruel world for as long as it 
takes.’

He left her to it and returned to his study. He settled down in front of his 
computer, and started on the first page of ‘The Poisoned Seed’.

*

Karl Pieter Kurtmeyer was born in Düsseldorf in the Rhine-Ruhr region of 
western Germany.

His father was Heinrich Eberhard Kurtmeyer. During World War II Heinrich had 
been a junior officer in the Nazi Gestapo. In the final days of hostilities he 
was captured by the British forces liberating the concentration camp of 
Bergen-Belsen. Heinrich was sentenced by a war crimes court to four years 
imprisonment for his part in the atrocities committed in the death camp.

On his release from prison he returned to his home town of Düsseldorf and 
found work in a nightclub called Die Lustige Witwe or The Merry Widow. He was a 
good-looking young man with cultivated manners. He was also a shrewd 
businessman and hard worker. He bought the nightclub on the death of the 
original owner from the widow. From these meagre beginnings he had built up a 
chain of clubs across Germany, and he was soon a wealthy man.

He employed a young dancer in the original Düsseldorf club. Her name was 
Marlene Imelda Kleinschmidt. She was bright, vivacious and beautiful. She was 
nineteen years of age when Heinrich Kurtmeyer married her. The following year 
she gave birth to a boy who they named Karl Pieter. Eighteen months after the 
birth of his son, Heinrich Eberhard Kurtmeyer succumbed to cancer of the colon. 
It was a demise almost as unpleasant as the ones he had meted out to the Jewish 
men, women and children in the death camp.

Marlene Imelda found herself widowed at the ripe old age of twenty-one years.

When the assessors came in to evaluate Heinrich’s estate for tax purposes 
they discovered that he had another secret vice, quite apart from that of 
slaughtering defenceless Jews: he had been a compulsive gambler. Contrary to 
what most people in Düsseldorf believed, Heinrich was not a wealthy man. He 
had frittered away his substance. Marlene Imelda and her infant son were left 
almost destitute.

However she was young, beautiful and resourceful. She knew where the money was. 
She emigrated to the United States of America and within months of her arrival 
she had found employment as a secretarial assistant with a fledgling oil 
exploration company based in Houston.

The founder and owner of the company was a man named Henry Bannock. He was a 
handsome, rumbustious and larger-than-life character. In appearance he 
resembled John Wayne with a touch of Burt Lancaster. In his youth he had flown 
F-86 Sabre Jets in Korea and was officially credited with six kills. Later in 
Alaska he had run his own charter company which he named Bannock Air. He had 
flown a great deal for the big oil exploration companies and in the course of 
business he met many of the top executives. They taught him the ropes and gave 
him entrée to the oil world. Soon he had acquired several drilling concessions 
of his own. Shortly before Marlene Imelda came to work for Bannock Oil he had 
brought in his first field on the Alaskan North Slope, so he was already a 
multimillionaire.

Marlene was in her twenties and even more beautiful than she had been at age 
nineteen when she met Heinrich. She knew how to please a man both in bed and 
out. She pleased Henry Bannock inordinately. The fact that she had a young son 
made her even more desirable to him.

Karl Pieter Kurtmeyer took after his mother. If anything he was even 
better-looking than she was. He had thick blond hair, a strong jawline and a 
slight epicanthic fold to his eyelids, which gave him a mysterious and 
thoughtful air. This minor imperfection seemed to emphasize the perfection of 
his other features.

Karl was intelligent and articulate. Even at this tender age he already spoke 
Spanish, French, German and English. His school grades were consistently A 
level. Henry was impressed by good-looking people who were also clever and 
compliant. Like his own mother, Karl was all those things.

When Henry Bannock married Marlene Imelda he formally adopted Karl and changed 
his name to Carl Peter Bannock, dropping the Teutonic spelling of his given 
names. Henry called in several markers to get Carl a place in St Michael’s 
Elementary, one of the most prestigious prep schools in the state of Texas. 
There Carl flourished. He was always one of the top three scholars in his 
class, and he played football and basketball for the school teams.

At home, Marlene Imelda proved that Henry was not infertile, as was rumoured by 
his many enemies. Within a short time of the wedding she gave birth to a 
seven-pound daughter. Like her mother, Sacha Jean was an exceptional beauty. 
She was also a gentle and sensitive child, and musically gifted. She started 
learning the piano at the age of three and by the age of seven she could play 
even the most technically challenging compositions in the standard classical 
repertoire, including Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto.

She doted on her big brother, Carl.

Sacha was almost nine years of age when Carl forced fully penetrative sex on 
her. He had been grooming her for this over the previous six months by inducing 
her to fondle his genitals when they were alone. Carl was thirteen years old 
and precociously sexually developed. He taught Sacha how to manipulate his 
penis, holding her hand onto his organ and moving it back and forth until he 
ejaculated. He was patient and kind to her, telling her how much he loved her 
and what a clever and pretty girl his sister was and how much she pleased him. 
In her innocence Sacha looked upon these games as a delightful secret between 
the two of them, and she dearly loved secrets.

Carl’s favourite place to be intimate with her was in the changing rooms of 
the swimming pool in the ten-acre gardens of the family home. The best time was 
when their father was away on business in Alaska and their mother was resting 
after lunch. Marlene had fallen into the habit of taking three or more 
gin-and-lime cocktails at lunchtime, and her gait was unsteady when she stood 
up from the table and headed for the bedroom. That was when Carl took Sacha for 
a swim.

The first time that Carl ejaculated into her mouth Sacha was taken fully aback. 
She was disgusted by the taste of it and she cried and told him she was not 
going to play any more. He kissed her and said that if she didn’t love him it 
was all right, but he still loved her. However, he didn’t act as if he still 
loved her. For weeks thereafter he was very distant and he said spiteful and 
hateful things to her. In the end she was the one who suggested they should 
have a swim together after lunch. Soon enough she became accustomed to the 
taste. But then sometimes he pushed it too far down her throat and she cried 
herself to sleep at night. The only thing that mattered was that her brother 
loved her again.

Then one afternoon he made her take off her panties. He sat on the bench in 
front of her and he touched her down there. She closed her eyes and tried not 
to wince and pull away when he put his finger inside her. In the end he stood 
up and squirted onto her tummy. Afterwards he told her she was disgusting and 
she must wipe herself clean and not tell anyone. Then he left her without 
another word.

She refused her dinner that evening and her mother gave her two tablespoons of 
castor oil and kept her back from school the next day.

Three weeks before her ninth birthday party Carl came to Sacha’s bedroom when 
the house was quiet. He took off his pyjamas pants and climbed into bed with 
her. When he pushed his thing inside her it was so painful that she screamed, 
but nobody heard her.

After he had gone back to his own room she found that she was bleeding. She sat 
on the toilet and listened to her blood dripping into the pan. She was too 
ashamed of herself to call her mother. In any event she knew that her mother 
was locked in her bedroom and would never answer her knocking or pleading.

After a while the bleeding stopped and she wadded her nightdress up between her 
legs. She hobbled down to the end of the passage and found a clean sheet in the 
linen cupboard to replace the bloody one. Then she crept down to the deserted 
kitchen and stuffed her soiled pyjamas and the bloody sheet into a garbage bag 
and put it into the dustbin.

The next day in school she knew everybody was staring at her. She was usually 
one of the stars of the mathematics class but now she could not work out the 
answers to any of the questions. Her teacher called her after the class ended 
and berated her for her poor attempt.

‘What is wrong with you, Sacha?’ She threw the paper down on the desk in 
front of her. ‘This isn’t like you at all.’

Sacha could not reply. She went home and stole a razor blade from her 
father’s bathroom. Then she went to her own bathroom and slit both her 
wrists. One of the housemaids saw the blood coming from under the door and she 
ran screaming to the kitchen.

The servants broke open the door and found her. They called an ambulance. The 
cuts she had inflicted on her wrists were not deep enough to be life 
threatening.

Marlene kept her out of school for three weeks. When she returned Sacha told 
her music teacher that she was not going to play the piano ever again. She 
refused to attend the musical evening that was scheduled for the following 
Friday. A few days later she hacked off all her hair with a pair of scissors 
and clawed her face until it bled, convinced she was breaking out in acne 
pustules. Her features grew haggard and her manner furtive and nervous. Her 
eyes were haunted. She was no longer beautiful. Carl told her she was ugly and 
he didn’t want to play with her any more.

A month later she ran away from home. The police picked her up eight days later 
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and took her home. A few months later she ran away 
again. This time she made it as far as California before the police caught up 
with her.

When she was sent back to school she set fire to the music rooms. The fire 
destroyed the entire music wing, with damage amounting to several millions of 
dollars.

After a prolonged and thorough medical examination Sacha was sent to the Nine 
Elms Psychiatric Hospital in Pasadena, where she began a long and difficult 
treatment and rehabilitation programme. Never once did anyone suspect that she 
had suffered abuse of any kind. It seemed that Sacha herself had completely 
expunged the memory of it from her mind.

She put on weight rapidly. Within six months her body was grossly swollen and 
she was clinically obese. She kept her hair clipped close to the skull. Her 
eyes grew dull and moronic and she chewed her nails so deeply into the quick 
that her fingertips were stubby and deformed. She sucked her thumb almost 
continually. She became increasingly nervous and extremely aggressive. She 
attacked the nursing staff and other patients at the least provocation. In 
particular she was intensely antagonistic towards any of the staff who 
attempted to question her about her relationship with her family. She suffered 
from insomnia and began walking in her sleep.

When the family were allowed to visit her for the first time Sacha was sullen 
and withdrawn. She replied to questions from her parents with animal-like 
grunts and mumbled monosyllables. She did not recognize her once-beloved 
brother.

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Carl Peter, darling?’ her mother chided 
her gently. Sacha averted her eyes.

‘But he is your own brother, darling Sacha,’ Marlene insisted. Sacha showed 
a small spark of animation.

‘I don’t have a brother,’ she said, using full sentences for the first 
time but still without raising her eyes from the floor. ‘I don’t want a 
brother.’

Henry Bannock stood up at this, and he said to his wife, ‘I think that Carl 
and I are doing more harm than good by being here. We will wait for you in the 
car park.’ He jerked his head at Carl. ‘Come on, my boy. Let’s get out of 
here.’

Henry abhorred being presented with misery and suffering in any form, 
particularly if it was related to him personally. He simply closed his mind to 
it, disassociated himself from it and walked away. Neither he nor Carl Peter 
ever returned to Nine Elms.

On the other hand, Marlene never missed a visit to her daughter. Every Sunday 
morning the chauffeur drove her a hundred miles to Pasadena and she spent the 
rest of the day chattering to her silent and withdrawn child. On one visit she 
took along a cassette of Rachmaninov’s piano concertos to play to Sacha on 
her portable tape recorder, hoping that it might reawaken Sacha’s musical 
talents.

As the first bars of the opening movement of the third concerto in D minor 
sounded, Sacha sprang to her feet, seized the machine and hurled it against the 
wall with maniacal strength. The recorder shattered. Sacha threw herself to the 
floor, drew her knees to her chest in the foetal position, thrust her thumb 
into her mouth and bumped her head rhythmically on the floor. It was the last 
time that Marlene attempted to intervene in her treatment.

From then onwards she confined herself to reading poetry to Sacha or reciting a 
detailed account of the past week’s trivial events. Sacha remained silent and 
totally withdrawn. She stared at the wall, swaying backwards and forwards in 
the chair as though it was a rocking horse.

Months later, Marlene Imelda discovered she was pregnant once again. She waited 
until the sex of the foetus was confirmed by her gynaecologist; then on her 
next visit to Nine Elms she confided in Sacha, ‘Sacha, darling, I have the 
most wonderful news. I am pregnant and you are going to have a baby sister.’

Sacha turned her head towards her and looked Marlene in the face for the first 
time during the visit.

‘A sister? My own sister? Not a brother?’ she asked in a clear and lucid 
voice.

‘Yes, darling. Your very own little sister. Isn’t it exciting?’

‘Yes! I want a sister very much. But I don’t want a brother.’

‘What do you think we should call her? What name do you really, really 
like?’

‘Bryoni Lee! I love that name.’

‘Do you know anybody with the same name?’

‘There was a girl at school who was my best friend.’ She smiled. ‘But her 
father found a new job and they moved to Chicago.’ She was animated and 
talking like a normal child of her age.

Week after week they discussed the new baby, and week after week Sacha asked 
the same questions in the same order. She laughed at her mother’s replies.

After Marlene’s eighth month of gestation Sacha sat next to her throughout 
the entire visiting period and Marlene held her daughter’s hand against her 
stomach. When the baby moved under her hand for the first time Sacha shrieked 
with excitement so loudly that the duty sister rushed into the visitors’ room.

‘What on earth is the matter, Sacha?’ she demanded.

‘It’s my little sister! Come and feel her.’

Marlene brought Bryoni Lee to visit Sacha for the first time when she was three 
months old. Sacha was allowed to hold her new sister and she sat with her on 
her lap for the entire visit, cooing and laughing at her and asking her mother 
questions about her.

After that first visit with Bryoni, Marlene never missed a week and Sacha was 
able to watch Bryoni Lee growing up. Her therapists recognized the beneficial 
effect that the infant was exerting on Sacha and they actively encouraged the 
relationship.

And so the years passed.

*

Bryoni Lee grew into another beautiful child. She was petite and dainty with 
pixie features and striking dark eyes. Her heart-shaped face was mobile and 
expressive. People were naturally attracted to her and they smiled whenever she 
entered the room. She had an enchanting singing voice. Her feet seemed to have 
been designed to dance. Yet she was strong willed and assertive.

Bryoni Lee’s natural place was at the head of the pack. Like her father Henry 
Bannock she was a born leader and organizer. In any group of children she 
effortlessly assumed control and even the elder boys bent readily to her will.

It took Henry some time to become accustomed to having a child in his household 
who he was unable to dominate entirely, especially in as much as this was a 
female offspring who was willing to stand up to him. Henry had strong views on 
the divides between the genders and the roles of and relationships of parents 
to children and men to women. Equality did not figure on his list.

Bryoni Lee delighted him in that she was clever and good to look upon, but she 
alarmed him in that she answered back and argued with him. Henry would fly into 
rages at her. He shouted at her and threatened her with corporal punishment. 
Once he actually carried out the threat. He pulled his belt out of its trouser 
loops and whacked her across the back of her bare legs. It raised a red weal 
but she stood her ground and refused to cry.

‘Daddy, you shouldn’t do that,’ she told him solemnly. ‘You were the 
one who told me that a gentleman never hits a lady.’

Henry had shot the Commie jets out of the sky over Korea and beaten the living 
daylights out of any number of the big tough roughnecks and roustabouts who 
worked his oil rigs, but now he backed down from an eight-year-old girl.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her as he threaded the belt back through his trouser 
loops. ‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. I won’t do it again. 
I promise you. But you must learn to listen to me, Bryoni Lee!’

In turn he began to listen to what she had to say, a courtesy that he had 
seldom extended to any other female. He discovered to his surprise that more 
often than not Bryoni Lee made good sense.

*

The year Bryoni Lee turned ten years of age was a memorable one in the Bannock 
household. In May Henry brought in his first off-shore deep water oil well. The 
market capitalization of Bannock Oil reached ten billion US dollars. And he 
purchased his personal Gulfstream V private jet, which he generally flew 
himself.

In the same month the Bannock family moved into their new home in Forest Drive. 
Designed by Andrew Moorcroft, of Moorcroft and Haye Architects, it was set in 
fifteen acres of gardens and contained eight bedroom suites. It won the Best 
House of the Year Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Carl Peter Bannock had graduated cum laude from Princeton and in June he went 
to work for Bannock Oil at its head office in Houston.

In July Henry Bannock asked his old friend and lawyer Ronnie Bunter to set up 
the Henry Bannock Family Trust to protect his close family from all harm and 
evil for the duration of all their lifetimes. The two of them laboured and 
agonized over the wording and the provisions of the trust deed until August 
when Henry finally signed it.

Ronald Bunter kept the original deed in his firm’s strongroom and Henry 
placed the only copy in his own strongroom at Forest Drive.

In August of that same year the doctors at Nine Elms told Henry and Marlene 
that Sacha Jean would never be able to live outside an institution and would be 
in care for the rest of her life. Henry made no comment and Marlene locked 
herself in her sumptuous new bedroom suite with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin.

In September Marlene Imelda Bannock began a spell of three months in the 
Houston drug clinic on a rehabilitation programme for alcoholics.

In October Henry Bannock divorced Marlene Imelda Bannock and was given full 
custody of both their daughters; Sacha and Bryoni. Carl was already an adult so 
his name never figured in the divorce documents. When she was released from the 
drug programme Marlene went to live alone in the Cayman Islands in a 
magnificent beachside property where she was tended by a large domestic staff. 
All this was a part of the divorce settlement.

In late October the Directorate of Civil Aviation refused to renew Henry 
Bannock’s commercial pilot’s licence. He had failed his medical check.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Henry demanded furiously of the 
physician who was conducting the examination. ‘I have just bought myself a 
Gulfstream for twelve million dollars. You cannot pull my licence now. I am as 
fit as I was when I was flying Sabre Jets in Korea.’

‘If I may respectfully remind you, Mr Bannock, that was some two decades ago. 
Since then you have worked yourself as if you were a one-man prison chain-gang. 
When did you last take a vacation?’

‘What the hell has that got to do with it? I haven’t got time for 
vacations.’

‘That’s my point exactly, sir. Then tell me how many Havana cigars you have 
smoked since Korea? How many bottles of Jack Daniel’s have you demolished? 
How much exercise do you take?’

‘You are being insolent, sonny boy.’ Henry’s face turned puce. 
‘That’s my private business.’

‘I apologize for that. However, I have to tell you that you have a classic 
case of atrial fibrillation.’

‘Cut out the technical gobbledegook. What the hell are you fibrilling and 
drivelling about?’

‘I am trying to tell you that your heart is dancing around like Gene Kelly on 
steroids. But that’s only the half of it. Your blood pressure is up there in 
outer space with Neil Armstrong. If I were your physician I would immediately 
place you on Coumadin, Mr Bannock.’

‘Thank God you are not my doctor. I know about this Coumadin stuff. I know it 
was used as rat poison and that it doesn’t taste like Jack Daniel’s; so you 
can take it, roll it into a small ball and stuff it up your rear end, Doctor 
Menzies.’ Henry stood up and marched out of the office.

Even without his pilot’s licence Henry continued to fly his beloved 
Gulfstream. He had two highly paid commercial pilots who covered for him.

However, sometimes in the still midnight hours he woke up with his heart 
stuttering and fluttering in his chest. He refused to see another doctor. He 
did not want to hear his death sentence being read to him.

With this warning that his days were numbered, he worked himself even harder. 
The idea of giving up his Havanas and his Jack Daniel’s was intolerable, so 
he put it out of his mind.

In November Bryoni Lee won a state-wide mathematics competition against other 
students three and four years senior to her and was voted by her classmates the 
most likely to succeed and the most likely to become the president of the 
United States of America. She took over from her absent mother the visiting 
duties for her older sister.

Every Sunday Bonzo Barnes, Henry’s chauffeur and bodyguard, drove her up to 
Nine Elms to spend the day with Sacha. Bonzo was a former heavyweight boxing 
contender. Like most others he loved young Bryoni. Bryoni sat up in front with 
him and they chatted happily all the way to Pasadena and back.

In December of that same year while his father was in Abu Zara reviewing the 
Bannock Oil concessions in that country, Carl Peter Bannock finally worked out 
the passwords and codes to Henry Bannock’s strongroom. Carl had found a spot 
on the swimming pool terrace from which he was able surreptitiously to overlook 
his father’s study. One Saturday morning he watched through the lens of a 
pair of 10x Zeiss binoculars as Henry sat at his desk and prised back the silk 
lining of his black leather desktop diary. Then he drew from beneath the lining 
one of his own business cards which he had concealed there.

On the back of the card in Henry’s large bold hand was written a long string 
of letters and numbers. He crossed the room to the steel door of his personal 
vault. Consulting the writing on the card, Henry rotated the dial of the lock 
back and forth to register the password and then he spun the locking wheel in a 
counterclockwise direction and swung open the massive door.

Carl had to wait several weeks until Henry left on his next business trip, but 
then he had ten days and nights to work with.

The first night, after many frustrated attempts, he was able to master the 
complicated sequences to deactivate the locking mechanism and to open the steel 
door to the vault.

The next night he photographed the interior of the vault and the arrangement of 
the contents. Before he dared move anything he knew he must be able to replace 
all of it in exactly its original position. He knew that his father would 
immediately notice any changes. He wore surgical gloves at all times so as to 
avoid leaving his fingerprints on any of the contents of the vault and he 
worked with painstaking attention to all the details.

On the third night he could start exploring the contents of the vault. The bars 
of gold bullion were stacked on the floor where their weight was borne by the 
steel and concrete foundations. He estimated that there must be about fifty or 
sixty million dollars’ worth of gold in the hoard.

Henry’s behaviour had always been dictated by a peculiar mixture of reckless 
daring and prudent caution. This hoard was his little emergency fund.

On the next line of shelves were Henry’s decorations and citations from his 
US Air Force days, and photographs and memorabilia of particular significance 
to him. On the steel shelves above were files of documents and share 
certificates, bonds and deeds of title to the numerous properties and 
concessions that Henry owned in his personal capacity. The other significant 
assets were held in the name of Bannock Oil Corporation.

On the fourth shelf from the top Carl found what he was really looking for.

He already knew of the existence of the Henry Bannock Family Trust. While he 
was still at Princeton he had begun hacking into his father’s telephones in 
his bedroom and in his study. He had even attempted to access Henry’s private 
phone lines at Bannock Oil headquarters, but the security cordon protecting the 
Bannock Building was impregnable.

Carl had been restricted to listening in on the line to the main bedroom suite 
to numerous conversations between Henry and his ex-wife and mistresses. But 
Carl had also made transcripts of conversations that Henry had conducted from 
his downstairs study, which included numerous conversations between Henry and 
his business associates and, more importantly, his lawyers.

Carl had been able to follow some of the discussions between Henry and Ronald 
Bunter, his principal lawyer, while they put together the Deed of Foundation of 
the Family Trust. But he had only a vague picture in his mind of the exact 
content and provisions of the final Trust Deed.

Now he found Henry’s copy of this large tome sitting in the middle of the 
fourth shelf.

Still he did not rush at it. He examined the deed minutely with a magnifying 
glass before opening it. He marked the pages that Henry had stuck together with 
tiny droplets of glue. He separated these carefully and re-glued them as he 
passed on.

Between page 30 and page 31 he found the hair that Henry had placed there to 
trap interlopers. He recognized it as one of Henry’s own hairs, wiry and 
springing, that he had plucked from his sideburns. Carl kept it in a clean 
white envelope and replaced it between the pages when he had finished with the 
document.

All these preliminaries left Carl with three uninterrupted nights before his 
father’s return from the Middle East to peruse the deed of the new Henry 
Bannock Family Trust.

What he read filled him with a soaring sense of his own supremacy. The Trust 
Deed had endowed him with almost god-like powers. He was armed against the 
world and shielded by billions of dollars. He was invincible.

*

Sacha Jean had gradually regressed over the years until she had reached the 
equivalent mental age of a five-or six-year-old. Her world had shrunk as her 
brain was stifled and shut down. She no longer recognized anybody except one of 
the middle-aged nurses, who had been especially kind to her, and her baby 
sister Bryoni.

When her nurse reached retirement age, Sacha’s already limited world was 
halved again and she became pathetically dependent on Bryoni. When the weather 
permitted it, the two of them spent all of every Sunday in the gardens of Nine 
Elms. Over time the physicians had learned just how reliable and responsible 
Bryoni was. They had no hesitation in giving her full care of Sacha for the day.

Sacha was now in her early twenties and obese. She towered over her little 
sister. Bryoni mothered her and led her by the hand to her favourite spot 
beside the lake, where they picnicked and fed the ducks. Sacha could no longer 
concentrate long enough to read for herself but she loved nursery rhymes. 
Bryoni read them to her. They played hopscotch, follow the leader and hide and 
go seek. Bryoni’s patience was endless. She fed Sacha the picnic lunch that 
she had brought with her from home, and wiped her face and hands when she had 
finished eating. She took her to the toilet and helped her wipe herself and 
readjust her clothes when she had finished.

Sacha particularly loved having her back tickled. She liked to take off her 
blouse and lie face down on the picnic rug and make Bryoni tickle her back. 
Whenever she stopped Sacha would cry, ‘More. More.’

One Sunday Bryoni was tickling her when Sacha said quite distinctly, ‘If he 
ever wants to touch your nunu, don’t let him do it.’

Bryoni paused in mid stroke and thought about what her sister had just said. 
Nunu was their baby name for the vagina.

‘What did you say, Sash?’ she asked carefully.

‘When?’

‘Right now.’

‘I never said nothing.’ Sacha denied it.

‘Yes, you did.’

‘I never did. I never said nothing.’ Sacha was already becoming agitated 
and nervous. Bryoni knew the symptoms. Next she would curl up in a ball and 
start sucking her thumb or bumping her head on the ground.

‘My mistake, Sash. Of course, you didn’t say anything.’ Slowly Sacha 
relaxed and starting talking about her puppy. She wanted her puppy back. For 
her last birthday Mummy had brought her a puppy, but Sacha was very strong and 
she loved and squeezed the puppy to death. They had to tell her it was sleeping 
to get the carcass away from her. She always asked Bryoni to bring it back to 
her, but the doctors would not let Sacha have another pet.

The next Sunday was bright and sunny and they picnicked at the same spot on the 
lake shore. Sacha didn’t like anything to change. Change made her feel 
nervous and insecure. When they had eaten their lunch, Sacha demanded, 
‘Scratch my back.’

‘What is the magic word?’ Bryoni asked her. Sacha thought about it, 
scowling with concentration, but at last she gave up.

‘I forgot the word. Tell me what it is.’

‘Is the word please, do you think?’

‘Yes. Yes. It’s please.’ Sacha clapped her hands with joy. ‘Please, 
Bryoni. Pretty please scratch my back.’ She pulled off her blouse and 
stretched out on the rug. After a while Bryoni thought she had fallen asleep, 
but suddenly Sacha said, ‘If you let him touch your nunu he will stick his 
hard thing into you and make you bleed.’

Bryoni froze. The words shocked her deeply, to the extent that they made her 
feel physically sick. However, she pretended not to have heard and went on 
stroking Sacha’s back. After a while Bryoni began to sing: ‘Humpty Dumpty 
sat on the wall.’ Sacha tried to join in but she got the words all muddled up 
and they both laughed.

Then Sacha said, ‘If he sticks his thing in your nunu it will be very sore 
and you will bleed.’ It was a trick of her damaged mind to repeat things over 
and over again.

‘It’s time for me to go now, Sash,’ Bryoni said at last.

‘Oh, no! Please stay a little longer. I get very frightened and sad when you 
go and leave me.’

‘I will come back next Sunday.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yes, I promise.’

*

The next Sunday Bryoni brought with her a Dictaphone she had ‘borrowed’ 
from Henry’s study.

She and Sacha walked hand in hand down to the lake. Bryoni carried the rug and 
the picnic basket. When they reached their special spot Sacha spread the rug 
and made certain there were neither folds nor tucks in it. Arranging the rug 
was her responsibility and she was very conscientious and proud of her ability 
to spread it to perfection. While her sister was concentrating all her 
attention on the rug, Bryoni slipped the Dictaphone out of the pocket of her 
jeans, switched it on and then returned it to her pocket without Sacha having 
noticed.

The day followed its familiar pattern; they fed the ducks and spoke about 
Sacha’s puppy that was staying with its mummy dog in heaven. They ate their 
lunch and Bryoni took Sacha to the toilet. They returned to the lakeside and 
lay on the rug. Sacha asked her to scratch her back and Bryoni made her say 
please. Then, while she was tickling Sacha’s back, she started humming 
‘Humpty Dumpty’. It set off a train of ideas in Sacha’s crippled mind, as 
Bryoni had hoped it might.

Suddenly Sacha said, ‘I didn’t like it when he made his thing squirt into 
my mouth. It tasted awful.’

Bryoni shuddered but kept on humming quietly. For once Sacha was at ease and 
she rambled on.

‘I have been trying to remember his name. He said he was my brother, but I 
don’t have a brother. He showed me how to hold his thing and go up and down 
with it until it squirted. I liked it when he told me how clever I was and how 
much he loved me.’

She fell silent again and Bryoni went on humming softly and soothingly. 
Suddenly Sacha sat up and exclaimed, ‘I remember now! His name was Carl Peter 
and he really was my brother. But then he went away. They have all gone away. 
My mummy and daddy; all of them have gone away and left me; all except you, 
Bryoni.’

‘I’ll never leave you, Sash. We will always be together like sisters should 
be.’ Sacha was placated and she subsided back onto her stomach. Bryoni 
stroked her back and hummed softly.

Suddenly Sacha spoke out in a tone of voice more resembling the woman she was, 
rather than the five-year-old she had become.

‘Yes, I do remember now that it was my brother Carl who came to my bedroom 
that night and climbed into my bed. It was Carl who pulled my legs open and put 
his big hard thing deep into me and made it squirt. I screamed but nobody heard 
me. I was bleeding and it was so sore, but I never told anybody because Carl 
had told me not to. Do you think I did the right thing, Bryoni?’

‘Of course you did, my darling sister. You are such a good girl, and you 
always do the right thing.’

‘Promise you will never leave me, Bryoni.’

‘I promise you I will never leave you, my dearest Sash.’

*

When Bryoni arrived back home from Nine Elms that Sunday evening Carl’s 
brand-new Ford Mustang was parked in the driveway. As she entered the front 
doors Carl was coming down the main staircase at a run. He was dressed in a 
suit and tie. His shoes were polished and his hair was slicked and glossy with 
oil.

‘Hi, Bree!’ he called down to her. ‘How’s our coo-coo sister? Is she 
still playing with the fairies?’

‘Sacha is just fine. She’s a very sweet and lovely girl.’ Bryoni 
couldn’t look up at his face; that smug arrogant face.

Carl swiftly lost interest in Sacha. He had only mentioned her name to rile 
Bryoni. He stopped in front of the full-length mirror at the foot of the stairs 
and adjusted the knot in his necktie. Then he took out his comb and carefully 
rearranged a few hairs that were out of place.

‘Big date tonight. She’s been panting after me for a month or more. Tonight 
is her lucky night. How do I look, Bree?’ He turned to face her and spread 
his arms. ‘Ta-ra! Ta-ra! Every woman’s dream, yes?’

Bryoni stopped in front of him and forced herself to study his face. Many of 
her girlfriends said that he was the most handsome man they had ever laid eyes 
on. She realized that she hated him. He was a sick twisted sadistic swine.

‘You know, Carl, this is the first time I’ve noticed that your right eye is 
bigger than the left one,’ she said, and he turned back to the mirror in 
consternation. She brushed past him as she ran up the stairs to her own room. 
She knew that for weeks he would agonize about the relative size of his eyes, 
and she was pleased.

Her dad was out of town. He had gone off in his new jet plane to some funny 
little country in the Middle East called Abu Zara, and would not be home for 
two days more. She was alone in the big house. She phoned down to the kitchen 
and asked Cookie if she could eat dinner in the staff dining room with the 
other household servants, instead of alone in the big old dining room. Cookie 
was delighted. They all loved Bryoni.

‘I baked an apple pie especially for you, Miss Bree.’

‘You are a darling, Cookie. You know that’s my absolute favourite.’

After dinner Bryoni locked herself in her study adjoining her bedroom and she 
copied the recording she had made at Nine Elms onto a spare tape. As she 
listened to Sacha’s sweet baby voice reciting such disgusting perversions she 
grew very angry all over again.

She caught herself thinking of the twelve-gauge shotgun in her dad’s den 
downstairs. Henry had taught her to shoot clay pigeons, and she had become a 
good little shot. Now she realized that she was in danger of losing her good 
sense and reason. She forced herself to return to her original plan.

When she had completed the copy of Sacha’s rambling recollections she locked 
the recorder in her bedside drawer and went back to her desk to complete her 
homework assignment for the next day. She switched off her light at a little 
before ten o’clock but she could not get to sleep until almost midnight. Then 
she was awakened again by the roar of Carl’s Mustang coming up the long 
driveway. He always drove very fast when he had been drinking. She checked the 
time and it was ten minutes past three.

The next morning she ate her breakfast in the kitchen with Cookie, and Bonzo 
drove her to school before Carl had emerged from his bedroom.

At mid-morning break she gave the back-up recording of Sacha’s confessions 
into the safe keeping of her best friend, Alison Demper. She knew that if she 
kept the recording at Forest Drive Carl would find it.

‘You have to swear a “Cross your Heart and Hope to Die Double Dixie Oath” 
that you’ll not tell anybody I gave it to you,’ she told Alison, who was 
intrigued. She dutifully spat on her finger, crossed her heart and swore her 
life away.

After school Bryoni pleaded a headache and was released from her art class. She 
went directly home and was waiting for her brother Carl when he returned from 
his job at Bannock Oil headquarters. He usually stopped for a beer with his 
chums at the Troubadour Inn, but this evening he came thundering up the drive 
in the Mustang a little before seven.

Bryoni was sitting in the window seat of her bedroom. She leaned out of the 
window and called down to him as he climbed out of the car and slammed the 
door. ‘Hi, Carl! If you have a few minutes I would like to talk to you. 
Please can you come up to my bedroom?’

‘Right on, sis.’

She heard him pounding up the stairs and then he knocked on her bedroom door.

‘Door is open,’ she called and he opened it, and paused in the doorway.

‘What’s up, sis?’

She was sitting on her bed but she had moved the armchair to the centre of the 
room for him.

‘Come in, Carl. Take a seat. I want to talk to you about Sacha.’ He closed 
the door and sauntered across to the chair. He sprawled into it with one leg 
hanging over the arm.

‘So, what is it about Sacha? Is she seeing little green men from Mars, or 
does she think she has turned into a pink polar bear at last?’ He laughed at 
his own wit.

‘Please listen to this.’ She held up the Dictaphone.

‘Is it your new all-time favourite rap recording, perhaps?’

Bryoni couldn’t bring herself to reply to him, she hated him so much.

She switched on the recorder and placed it on the bedside table.

There was silence as the recorder ran through its backing and then Sacha’s 
voice spoke out. Carl knew it was her at once. He straightened up in the chair, 
unhooked his leg from the arm and placed both feet together on the floor in 
front of him.

‘I didn’t like it when he made his thing squirt into my mouth. It tasted 
awful,’ Sacha said and Bryoni saw her brother wince, and his eyes shifted 
towards the window as though he was seeking an escape. But then they were drawn 
back to the recorder as Sacha went on.

‘I have been trying to remember his name. He said he was my brother, but I 
don’t have a brother. He showed me how to hold his thing and go up and down 
with it until it squirted. I liked it when he told me how clever I was and how 
much he loved me.’

Bryoni picked up the recorder and fast forwarded the tape for a few seconds. 
Then she hit the play button and replaced it on the bedside table. Sacha’s 
voice was firmer and more mature as she began speaking again.

‘… it was my brother Carl who came to my bedroom that night and climbed 
into my bed. It was Carl who pulled my legs open and put his big hard thing 
deep into me and made it squirt. I screamed but nobody heard me. I was bleeding 
and it was so sore, but I never told anybody because Carl had told me not to. 
Do you think I did the right thing, Bryoni?’

‘Of course you did, my darling sister. You are such a good girl, and you 
always do the right thing.’

Bryoni reached out and switched off the recorder, and then in the silence that 
followed she asked quietly, ‘Do you think that you did the right thing, 
Carl?’

His mouth was working but was forming no words. He wiped his face on the sleeve 
of his jacket and then stared at the sweat traces left on the fine cloth.

Then abruptly he sprang to his feet and snatched the Dictaphone off the bedside 
table and in the same continuous movement hurled it against the door to 
Bryoni’s bathroom. It shattered into its component parts. He crossed the room 
with quick and decisive strides and stamped on the remains.

His hands were trembling and his entire body was shaking as he turned back to 
face Bryoni.

‘The slut. The filthy little whore. You and your crazy whoring sister dreamed 
that all up. Admit it: you are as raving mad as she is. You are both jealous of 
me. You are trying to discredit me with my father. But my father loves me.’

‘Your father was a Nazi war criminal,’ Bryoni said quietly. ‘Your father 
was somebody called Kurtmeyer who murdered people in gas chambers and ran a 
chain of brothels. You are your true father’s rotten seed, Karl Kurtmeyer.’

‘That’s a lie,’ he shouted at her. ‘You made that up. You are a lying 
little bitch,’ he screamed at her.

‘I did not so make that up,’ Bryoni replied without raising her voice. 
‘Our mother told me all about your father one afternoon when she was drinking 
gin.’

‘It’s a lie! My father is Henry Bannock. I am his only son. He loves me and 
I am his heir. You and your dirty little whoring sister are jealous of me. You 
want to poison his mind against me. That’s why you are telling these filthy 
lies about me.’

‘We aren’t doing anything to you. You are the one who brutalized and 
debased your own little sister. You forced her to do terrible and disgusting 
things, and then you raped her and drove her out of her mind.’

‘Lies!’ he shouted at her. ‘My father will never believe your lies.’

‘He will when he listens to my recording.’ Bryoni stood up from the bed and 
confronted him calmly. He spun round and ran to where the shattered pieces of 
the recorder lay and dropped on his knees. He swept them up and stuffed them 
into his pockets.

‘There is no recorder,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. It never was. It was only 
a mad girl’s fantasy.’





‘I made a copy,’ Bryoni said. And he stood up and advanced on her 
menacingly.

‘Where is it?’

‘Where you will never find it.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘Never!’ she hissed at him fiercely and he hit her. It was an open-handed, 
full swing across her face. It knocked her backwards onto the bed. She pushed 
herself up on her elbows and there was blood in her mouth and it ran down her 
chin. She snarled at him again through bloody lips, fierce as a wounded 
lioness, ‘Never!’

The sight of her bright blood inflamed him. Blood always had that effect on 
him. It tipped him past the point of reason. He threw himself on top of her and 
forced her shoulders back on the bed. He was more than twice her age, and much 
more than twice her body weight. His strength was overpowering. He tore at her 
clothing and grunted, ‘You are going to have to learn a lesson in respect. 
The same lesson I taught your crazy sister.’

She screamed but he locked the fingers of his left hand around her throat and 
squeezed hard, while with the other hand he pulled down her underclothes and 
forced one knee up between her thighs.

‘Scream as much as you like. No one will hear you. No one will come to help 
you. No one will believe you.’ His voice was thick with lust. ‘I have to 
teach you respect.’

He sprang the buckle of his belt, and tore open the fly of his trousers so 
violently that one of the buttons flew off. Now he had her skin to skin.

Her lower body and loins were childlike and totally devoid of hair. She was 
unripe fruit; tiny, tight and dry. But he tore her open and forced his way into 
her.

In a paroxysm of agony she sank her teeth into his shoulder and he swore at her 
and released his strangling grip on her throat to prise her jaws open. Now they 
were both bleeding.

She threw back her head, and she screamed and screamed as he continued pounding 
into her.

Cookie in the kitchen below them heard her screams and she shouted for Bonzo 
Barnes, the chauffeur. The two of them raced up the stairs and burst into 
Bryoni’s bedroom just as Carl’s whole body contorted, and he bucked and 
groaned in orgasmic ecstasy over Bryoni’s slim half-naked form.

Bonzo hauled Carl off his sister and threw him across the room.

‘What you doing, man? She only a baby, man. She your little sister, man. What 
you think you doing to her, man?’ Bonzo bellowed at him. He picked up Carl 
from the floor by his throat and shook him like a rat.

‘Don’t hurt him, Bonzo,’ Cookie shouted at him. ‘Police going to take 
care of him.’ Bonzo dropped him in a heap, and Carl sat up.

‘No, don’t call the police,’ he pleaded desperately. ‘My father will be 
home tomorrow. He will take care of everything. He will pay you—’

‘Shut your face, you pig-dog animal. I’m warning you, man,’ Bonzo growled 
at him.

Bryoni was weeping bitterly with shock and pain. Cookie hugged her to her bosom 
and told her, ‘Hush up, my baby. He not going to hurt you no more. You safe 
now.’

She reached out and lifted the bedside telephone handset from its cradle and 
dialled 911. The call was answered almost immediately.

‘Young girl just been raped here. She’s bleeding pretty bad. We caught the 
pervert done it to her. Send the police.’

The blue-uniformed police arrived in two squad cars within twenty minutes. They 
listened to what Cookie and Bonzo had to tell them and then turned to Bryoni.

Bryoni stood up from the bed where Cookie had laid her down. She faced the 
officers. Her clothes were torn and bloodstained. Her face was swollen and one 
eye was blue and half closed. She was still shaking.

She took one step towards the police sergeant, but a thin ribbon of blood 
snaked from under her skirt and ran down her thigh. She moaned and clutched at 
her lower belly. She doubled over slowly and sagged to her knees. Cookie picked 
her up and held her to her bosom.

‘Holy Moses!’ said the sergeant. ‘Get the cuffs on that sad bastard and 
take him down to the station.’

His men grabbed Carl and twisted his arms up behind his back.

‘Take it easy, damn you,’ Carl protested. ‘You don’t have to act so 
tough.’

‘Like you didn’t have to act so tough with that little girl?’ one of them 
asked as he locked the cuffs on Carl’s wrists. Then he looked across at his 
sergeant. ‘Prisoner is resisting arrest, Sarge. Better we slap the leg irons 
on him just in case.’

The sergeant nodded approval, then turned back to Cookie. ‘We have to get 
this child to the hospital. She needs a doctor.’

Cookie wrapped the blanket around Bryoni’s shoulders. Bonzo picked her up and 
ran with her to the waiting squad car.

*

Ronald Bunter phoned Henry Bannock at the Bannock Oil installation in Abu Zara, 
and Henry’s voice was thick with sleep.

‘This had better be good, Ronnie. It’s three in the morning here.’

‘Sorry, Henry, but I have news for you. It isn’t good,’ Ronald told him. 
‘In fact it’s about as bad as it gets. Is there somebody there with you?’

‘Of course there is. Do you think I am a monk?’

‘She doesn’t have to listen to this.’

‘Hold on. I’ll move to another room.’ There was a short exchange between 
Henry and his mysterious companion, a pause and then Henry said, ‘Okay, 
Ronnie. I am sitting on the john and the door is locked. Give it to me.’

‘Carl Peter has been arrested.’

‘Oh no! The little monster,’ Henry groaned. ‘What is it this time? 
Speeding? Drunken driving?’

‘I wish it were, my old friend. It’s far, far worse, I’m afraid.’

‘Come on, Ronnie! Stop being coy! Out with it!’

‘They have charged him with a number of different offences. The most serious 
are common rape, statutory rape, aggravated sexual assault, common assault and 
grievous bodily harm, battery, incest and corrupting a minor. They are still 
investigating and questioning witnesses, but they have warned us that they 
expect to bring other charges of repeated aggravated sexual assault on a person 
or persons under the age of fourteen years. A couple of those felonies are 
capital offences in the state of Texas.’

There followed a long silence broken only by the crackle of static.

‘Hello! Hello! Are you still there, Henry?’

‘Yeah, I’m still here. I’m thinking.’ Henry’s voice was bleak. 
‘Give me a second or two, Ronnie.’ Then he asked, ‘Who do they accuse him 
of raping?’

‘Sorry, Henry! This is the worst part of it. He is accused of raping both 
Sacha and Bryoni.’

‘No!’ Henry said softly. ‘It’s a mistake. It can’t be true. I don’t 
believe it. Bryoni is my baby.’

Ronald wanted to say, ‘Sacha is also your baby,’ but he bit back the words. 
He didn’t want to add to his old friend’s suffering.

‘We are going to fight this, Ronnie. We are going to fight this with all 
we’ve got, do you hear me?’

‘I hear you, Henry. But just consider this for a moment. They have the 
testimony of both your daughters, they have the testimony of two reliable eye 
witnesses, they have samples of Carl Peter’s sperm taken from Bryoni’s 
vagina and mingled with her blood. They have photographs of the bruises he 
inflicted on her.’

‘Christ!’ said Henry Bannock. ‘Jesus Christ and Mary!’

Ronald could almost hear the pillars and rooftops of Henry’s universe 
crashing down upon him. He thought he heard him sob, but that was not possible. 
Not sobbing. Not Henry.

‘Do you think he did it, Ronald?’

‘I am a lawyer, I don’t sit in judgement.’

‘But you think he’s guilty, don’t you? Don’t talk to me like my lawyer. 
Talk to me like my best friend.’

‘As your lawyer I don’t know and I don’t care. As your friend I care very 
much, and I think your son is guilty as hell.’

‘He’s not my son!’ Henry said. ‘He never was my son. I have been 
fooling myself all these years. He is the get and spawn of some rotten Nazi 
bastard I picked up along the way.’

‘You better come home, Henry. We need you here. Your two little girls need 
you here very much.’

‘I am on my way!’ Henry said.

*

‘Look here, Ronnie.’ Henry leaned over the desk and pointed his finger at 
Ronald Bunter. ‘I want that dirty Nazi rapist struck off the list of the 
beneficiaries of my Family Trust, and I don’t want my Trust to have to pay 
for the legal fees of defending him from the crime of raping both my daughters. 
I have spoken to Bryoni and he’s as guilty as all sin and I want to see him 
swing on the gallows.’

Ronald swivelled back in his chair, placed his fingertips together and looked 
at the ceiling, as though he was seeking higher help and guidance.

‘You know we have been over this numerous times, Henry. However, I will 
address your three separate wishes in the order you expressed them.’ He sat 
straight upright in his chair, placed his elbows on the desk and looked Henry 
directly in the eye.

‘Firstly, you placed Carl Bannock on the list of beneficiaries and you made 
damned sure that nobody can ever remove him; not me, or you, or the Supreme 
Court in Washington. My hands are tied and you tied them. Secondly, you do not 
want the Trust to pay for his legal defence. The trustees, me among them, have 
no option in the matter. You made it abundantly clear in the deed of trust that 
you signed that we are duty bound to pay for all the expenses of protecting him 
from any legal action brought against him by any person or any government, be 
it the Department of Justice or the Department of Internal Revenue. It is out 
of our hands. Carl chooses his own defence team and the Trust must pay for 
it.’

‘But he raped my daughters,’ Henry protested.

‘You never made an exception for that eventuality,’ Ronald pointed out, and 
then he continued, ‘Lastly you have just expressed a wish to see Carl swing 
from the gallows. This can never happen. The State of Texas abolished execution 
by hanging in 1924. The best I can offer you is a lethal injection.’

‘I realize now that setting up that trust was the biggest mistake of my sweet 
life.’

‘Again I have to disagree, Henry. Your trust is a fine instrument. The 
sentiment behind it is a noble one. It ensures that Marlene, Sacha and little 
Bryoni, together with all their own children and your future wives and their 
offspring, will never want or lack anything that money can buy. You are a good 
and great man, Henry Bannock.’

‘I bet you say that to all your clients.’

*

The trial of Carl Peter Bannock lasted twenty-six court days.

The preliminary deliberations of the Grand Jury covered four of those days 
before they returned a ‘True Bill’, which was the equivalent of a felony 
indictment. The case was assigned to a court and the process of law was set in 
motion.

The judge was Joshua Chamberlain. He was a man in his sixties. He was a 
committed Democrat. He had the reputation of being pedantic and meticulous. 
During almost twenty years on the bench none of his judgements had ever been 
overturned on appeal; which was in itself a remarkable achievement.

In line with his liberal beliefs, he had meted out the death sentence in less 
than three per cent of the capital cases that had come before him.

The prosecutor was a woman. Her name was Melody Strauss. Although she was a 
little under forty years of age, she had handled many extremely difficult 
cases, and had built up a solid reputation for herself. She was assigned two 
legal assistants.

The defence team comprised five of the most expensive lawyers in the state of 
Texas. They had been carefully selected by counsel for the defendant. Their 
combined fees cost the Henry Bannock Family Trust a figure somewhat north of 
two hundred thousand dollars a day.

The first order of business was choosing and swearing in the twelve members of 
the jury from the fifty possibilities that had been put forward. This took more 
than a week, as the defence strove to exclude as many women as was possible. 
They used up all their ten peremptory challenges to strike out prospective 
female jurors, and then they grilled the remaining women on their attitude to 
the death sentence and their stance on female enticement and instigation to 
rape.

Melody Strauss met the defence head on and slogged it out with them. She strove 
to retain as many women as possible on the final list of jurors. Melody was 
quick-witted and persuasive. She questioned all the male candidates rigorously 
to detect any tendency towards male chauvinism. She reserved all her peremptory 
challenges to dismiss only male candidates who revealed traces of this defect. 
In the final count she managed to square the odds with an equal number of men 
and women on the jury.

On the tenth day of the trial Melody Strauss rose to present the case for the 
prosecution and was met by a barrage of objections from the defence. From the 
outset they challenged the competence of Sacha Jean Bannock to give evidence, 
on the grounds of her mental condition.

Both sides called expert witnesses. Melody Strauss called two members of the 
staff of the Nine Elms psychiatric clinic who had dealt with Sacha over many 
years. They both testified that Sacha had recently shown marked and sustained 
improvement in her memory and recall. They attributed this to the influence of 
her younger sister, Bryoni Lee, and to the catharsis she had experienced after 
she had recalled a traumatic event or series of events from her early childhood.

Under questioning they gave further evidence that Sacha’s symptoms and mental 
condition were a textbook example of the effects of repeated and aggravated 
sexual abuse in early childhood.

The expert called by the defence was a professor emeritus of UCLA Department of 
Psychology who testified that he had examined Sacha and he gave his opinion 
that Sacha was not capable of giving evidence under oath because she did not 
understand the significance of doing so. He further gave his opinion that any 
evidence she was able to impart would be completely unreliable and that the 
process would be so traumatic to Sacha that there was a high probability that 
she would suffer significant and permanent mental damage from the experience.

Melody asked the judge to give special permission to allow Sacha to give 
evidence in his chambers with the defence and the jury in the next room 
watching and listening over CCTV without Sacha being aware of their presence. 
After learned debate Judge Chamberlain denied the request.

Melody then petitioned the judge for leave to play Bryoni’s tape recording of 
Sacha speaking about her relationship with her brother Carl to the jury.

Again this raised a storm of objection from the defence, and again Judge 
Chamberlain denied the request of the prosecution.

Melody was left with a fateful choice. She could defy the odds and call Sacha 
Jean to the stand, or she could drop the charge of ‘repeated aggravated 
sexual assault on a person or persons under the age of fourteen years’. And 
go to trial with only testimony from Bryoni Lee as to her rape.

Melody Strauss turned to Bryoni Lee Bannock for final advice. The two of them 
had developed a special relationship in the short time since they had first 
met. Bryoni had swiftly come to like and trust Melody, and Melody had been 
impressed by Bryoni’s maturity, courage and good sense. More especially she 
had been deeply moved by her loyalty and devotion to Sacha and her intuitive 
understanding of the troubled girl’s condition.

‘What will Sacha do if I question her in front of all those people about what 
Carl did to her?’ she asked Bryoni, who answered without hesitation, ‘She 
will fall down and curl up like an anchovy; then she will suck her thumb and 
bump her head on the ground and go away into her own special dreamland.’

The next day, to protect and shield Sacha, Melody Strauss formally withdrew the 
capital charge of repeated aggravated sexual assault on a minor.

Spurred on by this partial failure, Melody threw herself with freshly rekindled 
vigour into pressing the other charges against Carl Bannock to their utmost.

She called Bryoni Bannock to the stand. The defence raised another storm of 
protest. Bryoni was an immature child. She did not understand the questions put 
to her. She was incapable of giving plausible and meaningful evidence.

Judge Chamberlain called a two-hour recess to consider the objection. He spoke 
to Bryoni alone in his chambers and returned to tell the jury, ‘This young 
lady has demonstrated to me more intelligence and maturity than many of the 
thirty-and forty-year-old persons who have stood before me in this court. The 
objection of the defence is denied. Miss Bryoni Lee Bannock may take her place 
in the witness box.’

In the witness box was where John Martius, the leading defence counsel, strove 
to destroy her credibility.

Melody Strauss had groomed Bryoni for the ordeal and instructed her as to how 
she should comport herself while she was on the stand, and the kind of 
questions she might be asked.

‘Keep your answers short and to the point,’ she said. ‘Don’t allow 
yourself to be side-tracked.’

In the event Bryoni conducted herself like a veteran. She answered every 
question firmly and politely.

‘When did you first suspect that your sister had been sexually molested?’ 
Melody asked her.

‘When she warned me not to let anybody touch my private parts or else they 
would hurt me. I was sure that somebody had done that to her.’

‘Objection! Supposition!’ John Martius was on his feet in a flash.

‘Objection denied,’ said Judge Chamberlain.

‘Did she say who it was that had done it to her?’

‘Not at first, but the longer she spoke the more she remembered. I think she 
had tried to forget the ugly things that had happened to her.’

‘In the end did she remember the name?’

‘Yes, ma’am. I can remember her exact words. She said, “Now I remember it 
was my brother Carl who came to my room that night and climbed into my bed. It 
was Carl who pulled my legs open and put his big hard thing deep into me and 
made it squirt. I screamed but nobody heard me. I was bleeding and it was so 
sore, but I never told anybody because Carl had told me not to.’”

‘Objection!’ howled John Martius. ‘Hearsay!’

‘Objection denied,’ said the judge. ‘The witness is describing a 
conversation to which she was a party. The jury will take cognizance of that 
reply.’

Melody Strauss moved on to cover the events after Bryoni had confronted Carl 
Bannock with the tape recordings she had made of Sacha describing the series of 
assaults upon her.

‘Objection! The alleged tape recordings have no provenance and have been 
excluded from evidence,’ cried John Martius.

‘Miss Strauss?’ The judge invited her to refute.

‘Your Honour, I am not seeking to introduce the recordings as evidence, I am 
using them merely as a time reference to the events of that evening.’

‘Objection is denied. You may continue, Miss Bannock.’

Bryoni described Carl’s assault upon her.

‘He demanded to know what I had done with my copy of the recording of what 
Sacha had told me. I refused to tell him. Then he struck me in the face and 
knocked me onto my bed.’

‘Did he cause you any injury?’

‘My left eye was swollen and bruised. My nose was bleeding and my lip was cut 
so that my mouth was filled with blood.’

The female members of the jury gasped and murmured and exchanged horrified 
glances.

In the front row of the visitor’s gallery Henry Bannock scowled and glared at 
his stepson in the dock. He had been there every hour of every day of the 
trial, hoping with his presence to bolster and encourage Bryoni in her ordeal.

‘After he had struck you and knocked you down on the bed, what happened next, 
Bryoni?’ Melody Strauss asked her.

‘Carl told me he was going to teach me respect, just as he had done to my 
sister, Sacha.’

‘When you say Carl, do you refer to your brother, Carl Bannock, the 
accused?’

‘That is correct, ma’am.’

John Martius intervened swiftly. ‘Objection! Carl Bannock is not the brother 
of the witness.’

‘I stand corrected.’ Melody Strauss was just as quick. ‘I should have 
said, half-brother. That relationship is also covered in the definition of 
incest in the felony code of the State of Texas.’

‘Objection!’

‘I withdraw that remark, and reserve it for my summation.’ She turned back 
to Bryoni. ‘Then what did the accused do?’

‘He climbed on top of me and opened my clothing.’

‘Did you try to resist him?’

‘I tried my best, but he is much bigger and stronger than I am, ma’am, and 
I was dizzy from the blow he had given me.’

‘After he had opened your clothing what happened?’

‘He took out his penis…’

Seated at the defence table Carl Bannock covered his face with both hands and 
started to sob loudly. John Martius sprang to his feet.

‘Your Honour, my client is overcome by these accusations. I ask for your 
indulgence, and request a recess for him to recover.’

‘Mr Martius, by all the evidence your client is a powerful and determined 
individual. I am sure that he can endure a little longer. The witness may reply 
to the question.’

‘He took out his penis and forced it inside me, into my vagina.’ Bryoni 
gulped, and wiped at her eyes. ‘It was so sore. The worst pain ever I had. I 
screamed and struggled but he wouldn’t stop pushing it into me. Then Bonzo 
came and pulled him away, but the pain did not stop and I saw I was bleeding 
down there. Cookie came and held me close and told me that it was over and Carl 
would never be able to hurt me again. She said she wouldn’t let anybody hurt 
me again.’ Bryoni folded up in her chair and buried her face in her arms, 
sobbing brokenly.

‘No more questions, Your Honour,’ Melody Strauss said softly.

John Martius jumped to his feet.

‘Cross, Your Honour.’

‘The court will recess until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You must reserve 
your cross-examination until then, Mr Martius.’

*

Henry Bannock, Ronnie Bunter and Bonzo Barnes were waiting outside the 
courtroom to meet Bryoni when she was released and they shepherded her through 
the mob of reporters and journalists that crowded the sidewalk and shouted 
questions at her. Bryoni held her head up high and looked straight ahead but 
her face was ashen and her lips trembled. She clung to her father’s arm. 
Bonzo Barnes broke trail for them, and his bulk and his scowl cleared a lane 
for them to the waiting limousine.

That evening Cookie brought Bryoni’s dinner to her bedroom on a tray and 
Henry sat beside her bed and talked to her while she ate. He told her how much 
he loved her, and how he wished he had been able to protect her and Sacha from 
the terrible things that Carl had done to them. He promised her that he would 
never let harm come to either of his daughters again.

Then he stayed with her and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

At ten o’clock the next morning Bryoni was on the witness stand again. The 
courtroom was packed and in the press section there was standing room only. 
Bryoni had been briefed by both Melody Strauss and Ronnie Bunter so she ignored 
them completely and looked at her father in the front row of the public 
gallery, and at Bonzo and Cookie sitting three rows further back.

John Martius stood up from his seat at the defence table and came to stand in 
front of her.

‘You understand that I am going to ask you some questions, Bryoni?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You don’t mind if I call you Bryoni?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you love your brother, Carl?’

‘Objection! The accused is not the witness’s brother.’ Melody paid him in 
his own coin.

‘I will rephrase,’ Martius conceded. ‘Do you love your half-brother, 
Carl?’

‘Perhaps I did once, but not since he raped me and Sacha, I don’t, sir.’ 
A buzz of approbation swept the courtroom at this and Judge Chamberlain rapped 
his gavel and said sternly, ‘Silence in court, if you please.’

‘Did you ever ask him to kiss you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Are you saying you never kissed Carl?’

‘I said I never asked him to kiss me, sir.’

‘Did you ever kiss him?’

‘Carl and I just naturally kissed cheeks to say hello or goodbye, like 
everybody does, sir.’

‘Did you ever ask Carl to kiss you on the mouth, Bryoni?’

‘No, sir. Why would I do that?’

‘Just answer my questions, please, Bryoni. Did you ever put your tongue in 
Carl’s mouth when he kissed you?’

‘Objection! Witness has already testified that she never kissed the defendant 
on the mouth,’ Melody pointed out.

‘Objection sustained,’ Judge Chamberlain said. ‘Counsel will withdraw 
that question.’

‘Question withdrawn.’ Martius bowed slightly to the judge, and then turned 
back to Bryoni. ‘Did you ever enter the bathroom when Carl was showering, 
Bryoni?’

‘No, sir. I have my own bathroom. I never went to Carl’s bathroom.’

‘Did you ever walk into Carl’s bedroom when you knew he was changing?’

‘No, sir. I have my own bedroom. I have never been to his bedroom.’

‘Never?’

‘Never, sir.’

‘What would you reply if I told you that Carl says that you wanted to watch 
him shower, and that you once went to his room at night and climbed into bed 
with him?’

‘Objection! Asked and answered! Witness has testified that she has never been 
in the accused’s bedroom.’

‘Objection sustained. Counsel will withdraw the question.’

‘I withdraw the question, Your Honour.’ But he was well pleased; he had 
placed a seed in the minds of the jury. He consulted his own notes for a 
moment, and then looked up at Bryoni.

‘Did you ever ask your half-brother Carl if he would like to see your 
breasts?’

Melody Strauss seemed on the point of objecting, but then she remained silent, 
and she let Bryoni reply spontaneously and tellingly.

‘I don’t have any breasts, sir. Not yet, anyway.’ She looked genuinely 
puzzled when two of the jurymen laughed out loud, but it was kindly laughter, 
without any trace of mockery. Two or three of the female jury members frowned 
in disapproval of their male counterparts’ levity.

Henry Bannock saw that Melody had withheld her objection deliberately. It was a 
shrewd decision. He hoped the jury would punish Martius for harassing a child, 
especially a pretty one.

Martius had taken a gamble when he introduced the element of female enticement. 
Now he knew it was a losing bet, and he changed tack at once.

‘Do you know that your father had such a high opinion of your half-brother 
Carl that he formally adopted him as his own son, and after Carl achieved 
singular distinction at Princeton he gave him a highly paid and responsible job 
at Bannock Oil Corporation?’

‘Yes, sir, of course I knew. Everybody knew.’

‘Did this make you think that your father loved Carl more than he loved you? 
Did it make you very jealous? Did it make you and your sister Sacha decide to 
make up hurtful stories about Carl?’

‘My daddy loves me, sir.’ She looked at Henry Bannock and she smiled. 
‘One of the reasons that my daddy loves me is because I always tell him the 
truth. He wouldn’t love me so much if I lied to him.’

Henry Bannock smiled back at his daughter and nodded affirmation of her 
declaration. His craggy and obdurate features softened.

‘No further questions for this witness, Your Honour.’ John Martius realized 
he had been bested by a child and he decided to retreat in some sort of order.

‘Thank you, Bryoni,’ Judge Chamberlain told her. ‘You have been very 
brave. You may go to your father now.’

Henry Bannock came to meet his daughter and placed one arm protectively around 
her shoulders. He shot a last vitriolic look at his adoptive son and then led 
Bryoni from the courtroom. Bryoni clung to him and began to weep quietly but 
bitterly.

Melody Strauss called her next witness. She was the police physician who had 
examined Bryoni on the fateful evening. Her name was Doctor Ruth MacMurray. She 
was mature and grey-haired, composed and quietly spoken.

‘Doctor MacMurray, did you examine Bryoni Lee Bannock on the evening of 
August fifteenth last in the emergency room at Houston University Hospital?’

‘I did.’

‘Can you please relate to this court your findings at the time, Doctor?’

‘The subject was a prepubescent female. She presented with superficial facial 
injuries consistent with having been struck with the hand. There was contusion 
and swelling of the left eye. There was also laceration of the soft tissue of 
the mouth. In addition the left incisor and first premolar teeth had been 
loosened by trauma.’

‘Were there any other bodily injuries?’

‘Yes, indeed. There was extensive bruising of both upper arms and throat.’

‘What would that bruising indicate to you, Doctor?’

‘It would indicate that the subject had probably been forcibly restrained by 
being held by the upper arms, and that she had in addition been held by the 
throat either in an attempt to strangle her or to prevent her crying out.’

‘Thank you, Doctor MacMurray. Did you find any other injuries?’

‘The subject showed all the symptoms of her genitalia being penetrated by a 
large rigid object.’

‘Were these injuries consistent with the immature subject having been 
forcibly penetrated by a mature and erect human penis?’

‘They were entirely consistent with that possibility. The hymen had very 
recently been ruptured and was still bleeding. The perineum between the vagina 
and the anus had been torn and had to be surgically repaired. In addition there 
was internal tearing and rupturing of the lower vaginal wall which also 
required repair.’

‘In your opinion were these injuries consistent with the subject having been 
raped?’

‘In my opinion these injuries were entirely consistent with aggravated rape 
and forcible penetration of the genitalia.’

‘Did you manage to collect samples of the bodily fluid that you found in the 
subject’s vagina, Doctor?’

‘I collected thirteen swabs from the damaged vagina. And blood samples from 
the subject’s clothing.’

‘What were the findings from the pathologic examinations of these samples, 
Doctor?’

‘In the case of the clothing samples two types of blood were found to be 
present. One was AB-negative and the other Opositive.’

‘Do these match with the blood of the accused and the victim, Doctor?’

‘Carl Bannock is blood type AB-negative, and Bryoni Bannock is type 
Opositive.’

‘Is type O a rare or is it a common blood type, Doctor?’

‘It is the most common type. About forty per cent of human beings are type 
O.’

‘And type AB-negative; is it rare or common, Doctor?’

‘It is the rarest blood type; possessed by only one per cent of humans.’

‘So does that mean that there is a forty to one chance of the AB-negative 
blood samples belonging to Carl Bannock, the accused?’

‘I am not a bookmaker, madam. I would not be able to quote you exact odds. I 
will say, however, that there is a much higher chance that the AB-negative 
blood samples belong to Carl Bannock than to anybody else on earth.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. My next question is regarding the swab samples you took 
from Bryoni Bannock’s vagina, Doctor. What were the pathological results of 
these swabs?’

‘In each case without exception both blood and seminal fluid were present.’

‘What was the blood type or types, Doctor?’

‘Only type Opositive.’

‘That is Bryoni Bannock’s blood type, is it not?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Now, Doctor, was there any other bodily fluid on the swabs that you took 
from Bryoni Bannock’s vagina?’

‘Yes, there was also male seminal fluid present.’

‘Male seminal fluid? Was the pathologist able to establish a match to the 
samples collected from Carl Bannock, the accused?’

‘The seminal fluid taken from Bryoni Bannock’s vagina was an eighty to 
ninety per cent match to those samples provided by Carl Bannock for the police 
surgeon.’

‘How were these samples tested against each other, Doctor?’

‘Three techniques were applied: the RSID strip test, the PSA test and the 
acid phosphatase test.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. I have no more questions,’ Melody told her, and looked 
across at John Martius.

‘Your witness, sir.’

‘No questions,’ Martius said without looking up from his trial brief.

Judge Chamberlain glanced at the courtroom clock before he instructed Melody. 
‘Please call your next witness, Miss Strauss.’

‘The prosecution calls Mrs Martha Honeycomb.’ Cookie stood up from her 
bench in the public gallery and made her way down the aisle towards the witness 
box. Despite the advice from Melody Strauss that she should wear subdued 
clothing, Cookie had not been able to resist the temptation to wear her finery 
for the occasion. On her head she had a tiny straw hat set at a jaunty angle 
and a small black veil over one eye. Her dress was patterned in large 
sunflowers which had the effect of emphasizing the size of her posterior. Her 
white shoes were very high heeled, which made walking a little awkward.

Once she was seated in the witness box Melody Strauss led her through a brief 
account of her relationship to the Bannock family.

‘How long have you worked for Mr Henry Bannock?’

‘Since I left school, ma’am.’

‘How long have you known Bryoni Bannock, Mrs Honeycomb?’

‘You can call me Cookie, ma’am. Everybody else does.’

‘Thank you, Cookie. How long have you known Bryoni, Cookie?’

‘Since the day she were born. Cutest little thing she were, too.’

‘And her brother, Carl. How long have you known him?’

Cookie swivelled her large frame around and glared at Carl sitting at the 
defence table. ‘Since the day he come to live by our house, and a sad and 
sorry day that were too, though none of us knowed that at the time. We all 
thought he were a good little fella.’

‘Counsel, please ask your witness to confine herself to answering the 
questions.’

‘Did you hear the judge, Cookie?’

‘Sorry, ma’am. Mr Bannock also say I talk too much.’

Judge Chamberlain coughed and covered his mouth with one hand to smother both 
the cough and his grin. Melody Strauss led Cookie through the events leading up 
to her and Bonzo’s rescue of Bryoni from Carl’s attack, and to his arrest 
by the State Police.

‘How did you know that the accused had gone upstairs to his sister’s 
room?’

‘Bonzo and I hear him coming up the driveway in that fancy machine his daddy 
give him for his birthday. Then we hear Bryoni calling to him from her room to 
come up ’cos she wanna talk to him.’

‘Then what happened, Cookie?’

‘We hear Master Carl running up the stairs and the door to Bryoni’s bedroom 
slam. Then there silence for a long while. Then Bonzo and me hear Carl shouting 
like he going out of his head. I say, “Bonzo we better go see what they up 
to.” But Bonzo he say, “Man, they just arguing like always. You and me, 
better we leave them to get on with it. I am going to polish the Cadillac for 
when Mr Bannock come home,” and off he go down the stairs.’

‘So he left you alone in the kitchen and then what happened, Cookie?’

‘Then there was a bit of quiet, and suddenly Miss Bryoni start screaming like 
she having her throat cut. Even Bonzo hear it down there in the garage. But I 
shout, “Bonzo, you better come quick. Sounds like there big trouble.” We 
runs up the stairs and Bonzo runs straight through that big ol’ door like 
there nothing there. I runs in just behind him and I see Master Carl on top of 
Miss Bryoni on the bed and she fighting him like a crazy girl and screaming her 
head off and he on top of her having sex with her.’

‘How did you know he was having sex with her, Cookie?’

‘Nuff good ol’ boys have done it to me for me to know for sure when one of 
them doing it to someone else, Miss Strauss.’

‘Please continue telling us what took place next, Cookie.’

‘Well, Bonzo go out of his head. Like all of us he just love little Miss 
Bryoni. He shouting at Carl, “What you doing to her, man? She your little 
baby sister, man. What you doing to her?” and stuff like that. Then he grab 
Carl and throw him clean across the room. Then I see Carl got his pants all 
open in front and his big ol’ hard-on sticking out a yard in front of him, 
all wet with my baby’s blood and stuff and then I want to kill him also, but 
I tell Bonzo leave him ’cos the police going to take care of him and we gotta 
take care of Bryoni. Then I call the police and they come pretty damn fast and 
they arrest Carl and Bonzo carry Bryoni to the police car ’cos she hurt so 
bad she can’t walk and they take her off to hospital.’

‘Thank you, Cookie. I have no further questions for you.’

Judge Chamberlain looked towards the defence table. ‘Counsel for the defence, 
do you wish to cross-examine the witness?’

John Martius seemed about to refuse, then he stood up slowly.

‘Mrs Honeycomb, you say you heard Bryoni inviting the accused up to her 
bedroom?’

‘Yes, sir, I heard her tell him to come up, but I don’t think she want him 
to play hide the ol’ pork sausage with her. I think she gonna play him the 
tape of Sacha telling what Carl did—’

‘Your Honour! Witness has answered my question that Bryoni Bannock invited 
her brother into her bedroom. The rest of her testimony is supposition.’

‘Please don’t speculate, Mrs Honeycomb. The jury will pay no heed to the 
rest of witness’s reply.’

‘Thank you, Your Honour. I have no further questions for this witness.’ 
Martius sat down again.

Next, Melody Strauss called Bonzo Barnes to the witness box. Bonzo corroborated 
every detail of Cookie’s evidence, but not as articulately nor as colourfully 
as she had delivered the original.

John Martius asked a single question in cross-examination. ‘Mr Barnes, did 
you hear Bryoni Bannock invite her brother Carl into her bedroom?’

‘Yes, sir. I heard her.’

‘Did Bryoni often entertain her brother Carl in her bedroom with the door 
closed?’

‘If she did then I never seen or heard her do it, mister.’

‘But you are not certain that she never had him alone in her bedroom?’

Bonzo thought about the question deeply and darkly. ‘It ain’t my job to 
stand guard at Miss Bryoni’s door every minute of the day.’

‘So you don’t know if Bryoni Bannock made a habit of entertaining her 
boyfriends in her bedroom behind closed doors?’

‘I am sure of one thing, mister. If I catch any boy in her room trying to do 
what Carl done to her I gonna break his neck.’

‘Thank you, Mr Barnes. No further questions for this witness, Your Honour.’

Bonzo rose to his full height and stature and glowered at John Martius. ‘I 
know what you trying to make me say, but what you hear me say is our little 
Bryoni is a good girl. I gonna break the neck of anybody who say she not!’

‘Thank you, Mr Barnes.’ John Martius backed away hurriedly out of the reach 
of Bonzo’s long arm. ‘You may leave the witness box.’

Melody called her next witnesses. He was Sergeant Roger Tarantus of the Houston 
Police Department. He gave evidence that he and his team had responded to an 
emergency call and gone to No. 61 Forest Drive, the residence of Henry Bannock 
and his family, on the evening in question. Melody led him through a detailed 
description of what he had found on the premises on arrival, and the actions he 
had taken. Sergeant Tarantus’s evidence tended to confirm the evidence of all 
the other prosecution witnesses, including Bryoni Bannock and both Bonzo Barnes 
and Martha Honeycomb.

‘So, Sergeant Tarantus, on the strength of what you had seen and heard at 
Number Sixty-one Forest Drive you arrested Carl Bannock for rape and sundry 
other offences and took him into the Houston police headquarters, where you 
booked him?’

‘That is correct, ma’am.’

The defence team declined to cross-examine the sergeant, and the other 
witnesses called by the prosecution were all character witnesses for Bryoni 
Bannock. These were Bryoni’s school teachers and the psychiatrists from Nine 
Elms who had come to know Bryoni well over the time she had been a regular 
visitor to her sister Sacha. One after another they described Bryoni as an 
exemplary student and an intelligent, well-balanced and normal child.

In cross-examination the defence attempted to lead the witnesses into agreeing 
that Bryoni had an abnormal interest in the opposite sex for a child of her 
age. In every case this was strongly resisted by all of them.

At last Melody was able to tell Judge Chamberlain, ‘No further questions. The 
prosecution rests. We are ready to make our summation to the jury, if it 
pleases Your Honour.’

‘Thank you, Miss Strauss.’ The judged turned to the defence table and 
asked, ‘Does counsel for the defence wish to call any witnesses in rebuttal, 
Mr Martius?’

A hush of anticipation held the courtroom. Everybody knew the defence had to 
call the accused, Carl Peter Bannock, to the witness box to give testimony in 
his own defence. Not to do so would be an admission of his guilt. To do so 
would be a calculated risk.

John Martius rose slowly, almost reluctantly, to his feet.

‘The defence calls the defendant, Carl Peter Bannock, Your Honour,’ he 
said. There was an audible sigh of released tension and Melody Strauss smiled 
thinly in anticipation, like a lioness with the scent of the gazelle in her 
nostrils.

Carl rose from his seat at the defence table and made his way in the palpable 
silence of the courtroom to the witness stand. His demeanour was that of 
profound contrition. He stood in the box with his hands clasped in front of him 
and his head bowed. His expression was tragic.

‘You may take a seat, Carl,’ John Martius advised him.

‘Thank you, sir, but I prefer to stand,’ Carl mumbled like a broken man.

‘Please tell us how you feel about these legal proceedings.’

‘I am completely devastated. I feel that I have lost the will to go on 
living. If this court places me under sentence of death I will welcome the 
executioner with open arms.’ Carl lifted his head and looked across the floor 
to his adoptive father, Henry Bannock, seated in the front row facing him. ‘I 
feel I have let down and disappointed my father. He had such high hopes for me 
and I tried to live up to his expectations but I failed.’ He sobbed and wiped 
his eyes on his sleeve. ‘I am deeply sorry for any hurt or damage that I 
might have inflicted on my two darling sisters. I am just as guilty as they are 
in leading me into sin. I forgive them, and I beg them to forgive me. I am 
overcome with remorse.’

Henry Bannock snorted with disgust and deliberately turned his face away from 
the sorry spectacle.

‘Are you guilty of the charges that have been brought against you, Carl 
Bannock?’ John Martius demanded.

‘I am guilty only of succumbing to temptation and to female enticements, to 
the sin of Adam and the wiles of Eve.’ The phrase was so theatrical and 
contrived that some of those that listened to it winced.

‘No further questions of this witness, Your Honour.’ John Martius sat down.

Melody Strauss came at the accused, the lioness now charging from ambush. 
‘Are you suggesting, Mr Bannock, that you were deliberately lured into 
committing rape by your two underage sisters?’

‘I am confused and deeply distressed. This has all come as a terrible shock 
to me. My memory fails me. I hear the accusations levelled against me and I 
think that there must be some truth in them, but I remember only very little of 
any of it, madam.’

‘How do you suggest your sperm found its way into your twelve-year-old 
sister’s vagina? Did she place it there herself, Mr Bannock, do you 
suppose?’

‘As God is my witness, I don’t know. I don’t remember any of this, but I 
am profoundly sorry for anything I might have done.’ He was blubbering again.

‘Do you suggest that your twelve-year-old sister inflicted the bruises and 
contusions on her own body? Perhaps she ripped open her private parts to shame 
you, do you think that possible?’

‘Maybe that is what happened, and if so I forgive her as I hope she will 
forgive me.’

‘Do you believe that those twelve law-abiding and upstanding citizens of the 
jury are naïve and gullible to the point of lunacy to fall for this claptrap? 
Is that what you believe, sir?’

‘No! I certainly do not believe that. It is only my own memory that I 
doubt.’

‘When did this strange bout of amnesia first strike you, sir? Was it when you 
realized that you were going to be made to pay for the hurt and shame you so 
readily inflicted on your young sisters?’

‘I don’t remember. I truly don’t remember.’

Melody threw up her hands in disgust. She was too shrewd to labour a point that 
she had taken so convincingly. She knew that the defence had paid a high price 
to allow their client to express his repentance in open court, and she was well 
pleased.

‘No further questions for the accused, Your Honour.’

‘Very well, ladies and gentlemen.’ Judge Chamberlain glanced up at the 
clock on the wall. ‘The time is a few minutes short of four o’clock. So I 
am going to adjourn this court for today and we will resume at ten o’clock 
tomorrow morning, to hear the prosecution’s summation.’

*

Melody Strauss’s summation lasted almost three hours. She laid the 
established facts before the jury in a cogent and logical fashion which 
demonstrated how she had earned her reputation. The jury and everybody else in 
the courtroom listened with total fascination. The manner in which she 
presented her case was flawless.

In contrast, John Martius made no attempt to address the evidence. He worked on 
the theory that his client had been the victim of enticement and entrapment by 
his two sisters. He put forward the theory that the motive of the girls was to 
bring Carl into disfavour with Henry Bannock and to replace him in their 
father’s affections. His rebuttal took only forty-eight minutes.

Judge Chamberlain summed up for the jury. He told them to consider carefully if 
Carl Bannock’s remorse for the crimes he was accused of was genuine or if it 
was merely rather poor acting, and if Bryoni Bannock’s horrendous injuries 
were self-inflicted.

‘Were those real tears of remorse that we saw in the eyes of the accused 
yesterday, or were they perhaps more saurian in nature?’ he asked them.

He sent the jury out directly after lunch to commence their deliberations.

Henry took Melody Strauss, Ronnie Bunter and Bryoni down the road to lunch at 
the local Burger King. Bryoni and Melody shared a double cheeseburger. Now that 
her ordeal was almost over Bryoni was once again chirpy as a songbird, but she 
held her father’s hand for reassurance, and once she whispered to him, ‘If 
Carl goes to prison, he is going to be real mad at me. Do you think he will 
come to get me when they let him out again?’

‘Carl is going away for a very long time. And we are going to make sure that 
he can never bother you again, my darling.’

By the time Henry called for the check it was after three o’clock. He was 
still paying it when a clerk of the court hurried into the restaurant.

‘The jury is back, Mr Bannock. They have reached a verdict. You had best 
hurry, sir.’

‘Good Lord! Well under three hours, that’s either very good or very bad.’ 
Ronnie Bunter gave his opinion.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ Henry grabbed Bryoni’s hand and hustled her 
down the street to the courthouse. The courtroom was full and the press section 
included reporters from as far afield as New York City and Anchorage, Alaska.

*

Hector Cross had left orders that he was not to be disturbed. He had diverted 
any incoming telephone calls to Agatha’s office in Abu Zara. He was so deeply 
engrossed in the typescript of ‘The Poisoned Seed’ that he had not been 
conscious of the passage of time until there was a discreet little double tap 
on the door of his study.

Hector jerked back from another time and a faraway place to the present. He had 
been so engrossed in Jo Stanley’s writing that for another few seconds he was 
slightly disorientated. He glanced at the window and saw by the outside light 
that it was already dusk. The day had sped away. He had not eaten since 
breakfast and had subsisted on cups of coffee that he brewed himself. He had 
barely taken the time to visit the toilet that adjoined his study.

He jumped up from the desk and crossed quickly to the door. He opened it, and 
she stood there smiling at him. She wore one of the white terry towel bathrobes 
and her legs and feet were bare. Her hair was damp and she had twisted it up on 
top of her head. She had bathed away the last traces of her make-up and her 
skin glowed. She looked young as a schoolgirl. She had obviously slept well for 
her eyes sparkled and the whites were clear. The irises were green, like tropic 
sunlight through seawater, sea green and serene.

‘Are we going to stand here staring at each other all night, or are you going 
to invite me into your lair?’

‘Forgive me. I had almost forgotten how good you look.’

‘You saw me just six or seven hours ago.’

‘Has it been that long?’ He was genuinely surprised and he checked his 
wristwatch. ‘You are right. I must learn not to argue with you.’ He took 
her hand and drew her into the room. ‘I do apologize for neglecting you. But 
it’s your own fault, I am sorry. You had me mesmerized with your literary 
genius. You had me hooked and hog-tied.’

‘You old flatterer, you!’ she said, but she smiled with genuine pleasure.

‘Sit down, please.’ He led her to the leather easy chair. She sat down and 
curled her legs under her. Then she tucked the skirts of the bathrobe around 
them when she saw him looking. They were lovely legs, he noted. ‘What have 
you been doing during the time I was so busy neglecting you?’

‘I had three or four hours of heavenly sleep. Then I availed myself of your 
gymnasium. I found a tracksuit in the gym cupboard that fitted me when I rolled 
up the sleeves and trouser legs. I changed all the settings on your machines, 
for which I apologize.’

He shook his head and laughed. ‘You are more than welcome.’

‘Then I had a sauna, and I shampooed my hair. I helped myself to all the 
Hermès and Chanel girlie goodies in your guest bathroom, and was pleased to 
note that none of them had been opened by previous visitors.’

‘You are the first.’

‘I am naïve enough to believe you. Perhaps that is because I want to.’

‘Cross my heart! But have you eaten?’

‘I wasn’t hungry. I was too busy exploring.’

‘Oh my God! You will die of starvation and I will never forgive myself. You 
have two options. Cynthia, my chef, is the finest cook in London, and possibly 
the universe. The Ivy Club runs her a close second.’

‘We both have been in this house, albeit this lovely house of yours all day. 
Perhaps it would be better if we went out to dine,’ she said, but at the same 
time she dropped her eyes demurely from his. Already he knew her well enough to 
divine what she was actually hinting: that it was still too soon for her to 
spend the evening in intimate seclusion with him.

‘The Ivy it shall be. It’s pretty relaxed with its dress code, but if you 
would like to change I can run you past your hotel.’

‘Thank you, Hector. I would prefer that.’

‘I will throw on something suitable while you change back in your togs, and 
then I will wait for you in the car outside the hotel while you put on 
something fresh.’

He was impressed by the fact that she kept him waiting only twenty minutes, and 
that when she returned she was wearing something understated but elegant.

‘Perfect!’ he said as he opened the door of the Bentley for her. ‘You 
look smashing.’

‘That’s an adjective that sounds odd to an ear from west of the Atlantic, 
but I shall take it as a compliment.’

He took her on his arm through the entrance that pretended to be a flower shop 
and they rode up in the grand glass elevator. The girls at the reception fussed 
over Hector when they took the coats and one of them led them up in another 
elevator to the dining room.

‘Do you own the place?’ Jo whispered to him.

‘Wherever one goes in this naughty world, a decent tip performs miracles,’ 
he assured her.

‘I suppose it doesn’t hurt either if you look the way you do.’

‘I hope you are not allergic to champagne,’ he said as they settled at the 
table.

‘Try me!’ Jo invited.

When they had tasted and approved both the wine and the first course she asked 
the question which had been on the tip of her tongue since they had left The 
Cross Roads.

‘So tell me, where did you get to in my story?’ she asked.

‘I reached the part where Henry and Bryoni are waiting to hear the jury’s 
verdict on that horrible little shit, Carl Peter Bannock. Forgive my language 
but you have made me hate him.’

‘You are totally justified in that. I think that Carl Bannock is one of those 
people who is truly evil from the core and without any redeeming sides to his 
character.’

‘So where is he now, this monstrous creature?’

‘Read what I have written, Hector. Don’t try and jump ahead of the story. 
If you do it my way you will understand much more of the characters involved 
here, and there are many of them. However, I assure you that you haven’t come 
to the best part yet, or should I rather say the worst part.’

‘Okay, but indulge me with one more question that is eating holes in me. Did 
Hazel know any of this? If she did, she never told me about it.’

‘Hazel had not appeared on the scene yet. She was still learning to play 
tennis is South Africa.’

‘But she must have known about it when she married Henry?’

‘I doubt Henry ever told Hazel the details. Ronnie Bunter says Henry was 
deeply ashamed of the dreadful scandal of it all. Henry felt terrible guilt 
that he had not been able to protect his daughters. On the other hand, perhaps 
it is possible that Hazel did know but she never told you. It is such a tragic 
and sordid tangle that perhaps, like Henry, Hazel just wanted to pretend it had 
never happened.’

‘What has become of Bryoni Lee? That little one was a heroine. I would love 
to meet her, if that is at all possible.’

‘Contain yourself. I am not going to tell you. You will just have to read to 
the end of the story.’

‘I warn you, madam. Patience is not one of my numerous virtues. When I want 
something I want it now.’

‘There are some situations in which the ultimate pleasure is multiplied many 
times over by the anticipation,’ she told him. ‘And storytelling is only 
one of those.’ Her expression was enigmatic, and only remotely touched with 
prurience.

‘I am certain that advice is the best available.’ He scarcely could forbear 
to smile, but he managed to match her restraint. ‘How did you meet Ronnie 
Bunter?’ He changed the subject.

‘He was at law school with my father. I come from a long line of lawyers.’

She took his lead and they talked at large throughout the excellent meal, 
getting to know each other. Afterwards he took her on to a private nightclub 
named Annabel’s. She had never been there before but Hector was joyously 
received by the staff. When they danced they discovered that they moved very 
well together. Then the music changed and became soft and sentimental. It 
seemed perfectly natural that he held her closer and that she laid her head 
against his chest. He drove her back to her hotel and he escorted her as far as 
the entrance, where she told him, ‘Goodnight, Hector. I enjoyed the evening 
immensely. Will you call me in the morning, please? We still have so much to 
talk about.’ Then she offered him her cheek to kiss, and was gone in a swirl 
of skirts.

*

He woke at sunrise the next morning feeling rested and cheerful, with an 
expectation of something good about to happen to him. He lay for a few moments 
wondering at the source of this ebullient mood. Then it all came back to him 
with a rush. He chuckled gleefully and swung his legs out of the bed.

While he hurried through his ablutions he phoned down to the kitchen and told 
Stephen to lay out his breakfast on the desk in his study, rather than in the 
dining room. When he ran down the stairs showered and fully dressed, he met 
Stephen just leaving the study.

‘Morning, Stephen,’ he greeted him. ‘There is one other favour you can do 
for me.’ Stephen followed him back into the room and listened with an 
expression of disbelief as Hector gave him his instructions.

‘Are you certain that is what you want, Mr Cross?’ he asked when Hector had 
finished.

‘Tell me, Stephen, when last did I ask you to do something that I did not 
want you to do?’

‘I don’t think that has ever happened, sir.’

‘And it’s not happening now,’ Hector assured him.

‘I shall see to it at once, Mr Cross.’

‘I can always rely on you, Stephen.’

Hector settled himself at the desk and woke up his computer. When the screen 
was aglow, he picked up the telephone and dialled the number of Jo’s mobile, 
which she had given him the previous evening. While he waited for her to answer 
he speared a slice of ripe mango and slipped it into his mouth.

Jo answered on the fourth ring. ‘Good morning, Hector. How did you sleep?’

‘I fell into a deep dark hole and woke up half an hour ago, ready to slay 
dragons.’

‘There are enough of those out there,’ she agreed. ‘Slay one for me. I am 
still in bed with a cup of coffee.’

‘Lazy girl!’ he chided her. ‘Life is for living.’

‘All your fault, keeping me up into the small hours. But it was fun, wasn’t 
it? We should try that again sometime.’

‘Soon!’ he agreed. ‘Like this very evening, if not earlier.’

‘I have to see some people in the city this morning. I promised Ronnie 
Bunter. It’s nothing to do with “The Poisoned Seed”. It’s a totally 
different matter. However, I shall be free after lunch.’

‘Come. I shall be waiting for you.’

‘You get on with your reading. I warn you, there will be questions.’

‘And I’ll have a few for you.’

He hung up the receiver, and turned his full attention to the computer screen.

*

Henry Bannock, with Ronnie Bunter on one side of him and Bryoni on the other, 
had only just taken their seats in the courtroom when Judge Chamberlain came 
through the door from his chambers and the bailiff called the court to order.

The twelve members of the jury, led by the foreman, filed from their room and 
took their places in the jury box. None of them looked to where Carl Bannock 
was seated at the defence table.

‘Good sign!’ Ronnie whispered to Henry. ‘They seldom look at a man they 
have condemned.’

‘Have the members of the jury considered their verdict?’ asked Judge 
Chamberlain.

‘We have, Your Honour,’ replied the foreman of the jury.

‘What is your verdict?’

‘On the charge of common rape we find the accused guilty as charged.

‘On the charge of statutory rape of a minor we find the accused guilty as 
charged.

‘On the charge of aggravated sexual assault we find the accused guilty as 
charged.

‘On the charge of common assault and grievous bodily harm we find the accused 
guilty as charged.

‘On the charge of a commission of incest we find the accused guilty as 
charged.

‘On the charge of corrupting the morals of a minor we find the accused guilty 
as charged.’

‘Six out of six,’ breathed Ronnie Bunter. ‘Full marks to Melody 
Strauss.’

Judge Chamberlain thanked and dismissed the members of the jury and then 
conferred with the counsels for the defence and the prosecution. Finally, he 
addressed the court. ‘We will adjourn until tomorrow at ten o’clock, when I 
will pass sentence on the prisoner.’

That evening Henry hosted a celebratory dinner party at Forest Drive for twenty 
close friends and relatives. Cookie served a baron of prime Texan beef, 
comprising two full tenderloins left uncut and joined at the backbone, rare and 
oozing juices.

Henry opened a dozen bottles of Château Lafite Rothschild 1955, to complement 
the beef.

Ronnie leaned across the table to bet Melody Strauss that Carl would only get 
ten years in the state pen. Joshua Chamberlain was a notorious liberal, Ronnie 
claimed. Melody put ten dollars on a sentence of at least fifteen years. 
However, they both agreed that the Château Lafite was the best wine they had 
ever tasted.

Bryoni could not make it through to the dessert course before her eyes closed 
and she slumped head down onto the table. Henry carried her up to her room and 
tucked her into bed. He sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her hair until 
she had fallen asleep for the second time before he went back to rejoin his 
dinner guests. As soon as he was gone Cookie smuggled a large bowl of chocolate 
ice cream up to Bryoni’s bedroom by the back stairs. Bryoni found sufficient 
reserves of strength to wake up and polish off the bowl.

The following morning at eight o’clock Bonzo Barnes drove Bryoni to school. 
Henry wanted her to return to her normal routine as soon as possible. He had 
arranged long-term counselling for her and he had spoken at length to the 
school principal and Bryoni’s class teacher. Henry was satisfied that he had 
done everything in his power to help her weather the hurricane and get her life 
back on an even keel. He had been warned that it might be a long process, but 
Henry had faith in his daughter’s strength of character and her maturity.

Henry left for the courthouse in an angry and vengeful mood. At ten o’clock 
precisely the bailiff called the court to order.

Henry Bannock sat with Ronnie Bunter in his usual place in the front row of the 
visitors’ gallery.

Carl Peter Bannock was led up the staircase from the holding section by two 
uniformed guards. He was manacled and restrained by leg irons. He was pale, 
unshaven and unkempt. There were dark shadows under his bloodshot eyes. He 
looked pleadingly across the courtroom at Henry.

Henry’s expression was cold and angry. He held Carl’s eyes for a long 
moment. Carl smiled uncertainly and his lips quivered. Deliberately, Henry 
turned his face away from him in total and final rejection.

Carl’s shoulders slumped and he shuffled across the floor to stand in the 
dock facing Judge Chamberlain.

‘Prisoner at the bar, you have heard the verdict of the jury. Do you have 
anything to say in mitigation of the sentence which will be passed upon you?’

Carl looked down at the irons locked to his ankles. ‘I am truly sorry for the 
anguish I have caused to my father and the other members of my family. I will 
try to make it up to them all in any way I can.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘Yes, Judge, I am very sorry.’

‘This court takes cognizance of your contrition in mitigation of sentence,’ 
Judge Chamberlain said, and looked down to rearrange the papers on the desk in 
front of him. He looked up again.

‘The sentence of this court is as follows:

‘On the charge of corrupting the morals of a minor I sentence you to five 
years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

‘On the charge of incest I sentence you to six years’ detention in a 
federal penitentiary.

‘On the charge of common assault and grievous bodily harm I sentence you to 
six years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

‘On the charge of aggravated sexual assault on a minor I sentence you to 
twenty years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

‘On the charge of common rape I sentence you to fifteen years’ detention in 
a federal penitentiary.

‘On the charge of statutory rape of a minor I sentence you to fifteen 
years’ detention in a federal penitentiary.

‘I direct that the sentences shall run concurrently, and that you shall be 
incarcerated for a minimum period of fifteen years.’

Judge Chamberlain looked across at John Martius expectantly. Martius rose to 
his feet.

‘Your Honour, I beg your permission to lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court 
against the sentence.’

‘Permission is granted,’ Joshua Chamberlain said. ‘However, the prisoner 
will be taken directly from this court to the Holliday Induction Unit in 
Huntsville and from thence to the penitentiary assigned to him to commence 
serving the sentence of this court immediately.’

He looked back at the two guards. ‘Gentlemen, please do your duty.’

Each of the guards seized one of Carl Bannock’s arms and they guided him to 
the head of the staircase. His leg irons clanked as he descended the stairs to 
the holding area.

‘The court will rise,’ called out the bailiff.

Henry and Ronnie were the last two remaining in the courtroom.

‘It could have been better,’ Ronnie gave his opinion. ‘I was very much 
hoping for twenty-five years minimum. But fifteen years will have to do. At 
least it’s all over at last, and you have gotten rid of the rotten seed that 
has poisoned your family.’

‘I wonder,’ Henry said darkly. ‘Is it really over, and have my girls and 
I truly seen the last of that perverted animal?’

*

The truck was parked hard up against the rear door of the court building, in 
the gated secure compound. The rear doors were open to receive Carl Bannock. 
The sides of the truck were signwritten with the letters TDCJ–CID, for Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice – Correctional Institutions Division. Carl was 
bundled in through the rear doors and his leg irons were locked into the 
ring-bolts on the floor between his legs. The doors were slammed shut and 
locked and the truck pulled away on its seventy-mile journey to the Huntsville 
induction centre.

The Holloway Induction Unit was a square concrete block four levels high, with 
heavily barred windows. It was protected by guard towers and a triple row of 
ring-fencing. At each of the three gates the truck passed through heavy 
security checks. When it reached the main building Carl’s leg irons were 
unlocked, and he was shepherded by his guards through a series of electronic 
gates to the primary reception area.

His papers were checked once again and Carl’s name and details were entered 
in the register. Then the sergeant behind the desk signed the receipt for his 
delivery. Two new guards took over from those who had brought him down from 
Houston. He was led through another remotely controlled gate into the main 
reception area. All his personal possessions, including his gold signet ring, 
his wallet and his gold Rolex wristwatch, and his civilian clothing were taken 
from him. They were inventoried and bagged. When the guard gave him the receipt 
book to sign he handed him back a ten-dollar bill from his wallet.

‘What’s this for?’ Carl asked.

‘You are a sex offender. It’s for essential toiletries.’

‘What has my conviction got to do with it?’

‘You’ll find out.’ The guard gave him a sly grin.

He led Carl to the barber shop, where his hair was cropped down to the skull. 
The barber stood back to admire his handiwork.

‘Stunning!’ He gave his opinion. ‘Them good ol’ boys in Holloway are 
going to love you, baby.’

The guards took him on to the showers to scrub up. Then, naked and wet, he went 
on to the tailor, where he was handed his uniform through a hatch. His new 
uniform was made up of a white tee shirt and underpants, baggy white canvas 
jacket and trousers with a drawstring waist, and white canvas slip-on shoes.

Through another electronic gate he was taken to a single cell in a long row of 
cells and locked down. The furnishing consisted of a squat-pan toilet and a 
wooden bunk that was fixed firmly to the floor and side wall. There was a 
single blanket but no mattress. Later, his dinner was handed to him through the 
hatch. It was a bowl of watery stew with a thick slice of bread dunked in it.

Early the next morning he was taken from his cell to the interview room, where 
three members of the induction board were waiting for him, seated at a steel 
table. All three of them were uniformed members of the Correctional 
Institutions Division staff.

‘Carl Peter Bannock. Is that correct?’ the man seated in the middle of the 
trio asked without looking up.

‘Yes,’ Carl replied.

‘Sir!’ the inquisitor corrected him.

‘Sir,’ Carl agreed dutifully.

‘Fifteen years’ sentence, minimum. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sex offender and paedophile. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Carl said through gritted teeth.

‘Better send him to Holloway Long Term Correctional Unit,’ said one of the 
other members of the panel.

The senior member of the panel suggested, ‘Send him to the sixth level, where 
the other long-termers can’t get at him?’

‘The only place those good ol’ boys won’t get at him is in heaven, and 
this pretty boy ain’t never going that high.’ The third member of the panel 
sniggered and the others chuckled.

That afternoon another TDCJ–CID truck carried Carl a further twenty miles 
south into the historic cotton slavery belt where the Holloway penitentiary 
stood in a bleak and featureless landscape like a massive grey concrete 
monument to the infamy of mankind.

Here the security was even more forbidding than it had been at the induction 
centre. It took twenty minutes for the vehicle to pass through the three 
ring-fences and to park at the prisoner reception entrance. Then it was a 
further twenty-five minutes before Carl had his manacles and leg irons removed 
and he was transferred from the ground level to his final destination on the 
sixth and top level of the building.

From the elevator he was marched down a short passageway to a green-painted 
door which was signed OFFICE OF THE LEVEL SUPERVISOR. One of the guards knocked 
on the door and was rewarded with a muffled bellow from within. He opened the 
door and jerked his head at Carl to enter. The level supervisor was sitting 
behind his desk. The plastic name tag pinned to his shirt proclaimed him to be 
LUCAS HELLER.

His chair was teetering on its two back legs and Lucas’s booted feet were 
planted on the desktop. With a crash he let the chair fall forward onto all 
four legs and he stood up. He was tall, round shouldered and lean. His sandy 
hair was thinning, but what was left of it flopped onto his forehead. His ears 
were disproportionally large for his long pale face. His eyes were also pale 
and watery, but the tip of his nose was pink and the nostrils moist with 
rhinitis. His two upper front teeth protruded to give him the air of an anaemic 
rabbit.

He carried a riding crop in his right hand. He came around from behind his desk 
and circled Carl slowly on his long stork-like legs. He sniffed wetly as he 
reached out with the riding crop and stroked Carl’s buttocks with the leather 
flap on the end of the crop. Carl started with surprise and Lucas sniffed again 
and giggled like a girl.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice. You should fit in very nicely here.’ He 
winked at one of the guards. ‘A nice tight fit. Get it?’

‘Yeah! I got it, Super.’ The guard guffawed.

Lucas came around in front of Carl and sat on the edge of his desk.

‘Have you got your ten dollars for the essential toiletries, Beauty 
Bannock?’

‘Yes, Super.’

‘Let’s have it.’ Lucas held out his hand and snapped his fingers. Carl 
groped in the pocket of his white canvas pants and brought out the crumpled 
bill. Lucas plucked it from his hand. Then he went back behind his desk and 
opened one of the drawers. He took out a large plastic bottle and slid it 
across the desktop towards Carl.

‘There you have it.’

Carl picked up the bottle and examined the label. ‘Best Quality Macassar 
essential oil. Great for the hair,’ he read aloud and looked puzzled.

‘What should I do with this, Super?’

‘You will know when the time comes,’ Lucas assured him. ‘Just keep it 
handy.’ Then he glanced at the guard. ‘Have you got the check for this 
piece of goods?’

‘Right here, Super.’ The guard laid the check-in book in front of him, and 
Lucas dashed off his signature.

‘Okay, boys. Bring him along.’ They marched Carl back along the passageway, 
through another massive door and into a long gallery of grey steel and darker 
grey concrete. The vaulted ceiling high overhead was covered with armoured 
glass. Sharp rectangular shafts of brilliant sunlight burned down, filled with 
dancing silver dust motes. On each side of the gallery stood a long row of 
barred steel cages. Shadowy figures clung to the bars or crouched behind them, 
peering through as Carl was led past. Some of them called out sardonic 
greetings and blew wolf whistles, giggled and hooted and reached through the 
bars to make obscene gestures at him.

Lucas stopped at the last cell in the row and opened the door with his 
electronic master key.

‘Welcome to cell number 601. The Honeymoon Suite.’ Lucas grinned and waved 
him through. As Carl stepped over the threshold the door slid closed behind 
him. Lucas and his escort left him and returned the way they had come, without 
looking back.

Carl went to sit on the single bunk, and surveyed cell 601. It was no larger 
than his cell at the induction centre had been. The only improvement was the 
tiny stainless-steel washbasin beside the squat pan of the toilet and a stool 
set at a bare writing desk. Every piece of furniture was bolted to the walls so 
it could not be used as a weapon.

This was to be his home for at least the next fifteen years, and his spirits 
quailed.

At six o’clock that evening a bell rang and Carl, taking his cue from the 
other inmates, went to stand at the door of his cell. All the cell doors on the 
level opened simultaneously, and the prisoners stepped out into the gallery.

On shouted commands from the armed guards on the steel catwalk high above, they 
turned and filed down to the canteen at the other end of the gallery. As each 
prisoner passed the kitchen hatch a small plastic tray was shoved at him by one 
of the kitchen staff. Dinner was a bowl of soup, another bowl of mutton stew 
and a round of white bread. Carl took his place at one of the bare steel 
tables, but none of the other inmates came to join him. They formed cliques 
with others of the same ethnic backgrounds. Some of them were obviously 
discussing Carl, but he could not hear what they were saying, so he ignored 
them. He told himself bitterly that he would have many more years to find his 
place in this warped society.

They were given twenty minutes to eat, and then the guards on the walkways up 
above chivvied them back to their cells.

Lock-down was at precisely seven thirty. Carl lay on his back on the bunk with 
his ankles crossed and his hands behind his head. He was exhausted. It had been 
a day of worry and uncertainty. At least the dinner had been edible and he 
longed for the arc lights that burned down into his cell to be switched off for 
the night. But he had been warned by the guards that was never going to happen.

Gradually he became aware that the voices of the prisoners in the cells around 
him had sunk to expectant whispers and muffled sniggers. Carl sat up and looked 
out through his bars into the long gallery, but his view was limited and he 
could see no reason for the charged mood that seemed to grip the other inmates 
on Level Six.

Then he sat up again and swung his legs off the bunk as he became aware of the 
tramp of many feet approaching down the gallery. Lucas Heller, the level 
supervisor, came into his line of sight. He was carrying his riding crop. He 
wore a regulation hat and a crisply ironed uniform.

‘Prisoner, on your feet!’ he ordered.

Carl stood up from the bed.

‘How are you enjoying your first night in Holloway, Bannock?’

‘Fine, Super.’

‘Dinner okay?’

‘No complaints, Super.’

‘Bored, are you?’

‘Not really, Super.’

‘That’s bad luck, Bannock. Because I brought some good ol’ boys to keep 
you company. A number of them been here twenty years and more, and they bored 
as all hell. None of them had a woman in all that time, and they hot as all 
hell, too, I can tell you!’

Carl stood to attention, and he felt his skin crawl. He had heard the jokes and 
rumours, but he had wanted to believe they were not true and that it would 
never happen to him. But there were strange men crowding forward behind Lucas.

‘May I introduce to you Mr Johnny Congo?’ Lucas put his hand on the 
shoulder of the man nearest to him. Lucas was tall but he had to reach up to 
his own head level to do so. The man seemed to be a massive mountain of 
anthracite. His head was round and smooth as a cannon ball. He wore only a tee 
shirt and shorts, so Carl could see that his limbs were like baulks of ebony 
hardwood, solid muscle and bone almost devoid of any trace of fat.

‘Mr Congo lives on death row downstairs while the Supreme Court considers his 
appeal. He has been with us eight years and is highly respected here in 
Holloway, so he’s got special visiting rights.’ Lucas held his hand out, 
palm upwards, and Johnny Congo placed a twenty-dollar bill in it. Lucas smiled 
his thanks and pressed the door release. The bars slid aside.

‘Go ahead, Mr Congo. Take all the time you want; just enjoy yourself.’ 
Congo stepped into the cell, and the other men crowded up to the barred cell 
door behind him, jostling each other for position, grinning in anticipation.

‘You got your Macassar oil, white boy?’ Congo asked Carl. ‘You got about 
thirty seconds to get yourself lubed up, and down on your knees, otherwise 
I’m coming in dry.’

Carl backed away from him. He was speechless with terror, and he was beginning 
to blubber. ‘No. No, please leave me alone.’

The cell was small and with three giant strides Congo had him trapped in the 
corner. He reached out and grabbed Carl’s upper arm. With a casual flick of 
the wrist he hurled him face down on his bunk.

‘Get your pants down, white boy. Give me the oil.’ Then Congo saw for 
himself the Macassar oil bottle on the shelf above the washbasin where Carl had 
placed it. He took it down and screwed off the cap. He went back to the bunk. 
Carl had rolled himself into a ball, with his knees under his chin. Congo 
flipped Carl over onto his face, then placed his knee between Carl’s shoulder 
blades and ripped down the elastic top of his pants. He held the bottle up high 
and poured half the contents over Carl’s buttocks.

‘Ready or not, here I come!’ Congo said as he got into position behind Carl.

‘No…’ Carl blubbered, and then he screamed. It was a sound of utmost 
anguish. Each of the waiting men handed their entrance fee to Lucas, like the 
spectators at a ball game, and then they crowded into the cell behind the pair 
on the bunk. Their voices were thick with lust and excitement. One of them sang 
out, ‘Go, Congo! Go, go, go!’

The others laughed and took up the refrain.

‘Go, Congo, go!’

Suddenly Congo arched his back, threw back his head and gave a cry like a bull 
moose in rut. The man behind him helped him off, and then immediately took his 
place. Carl screamed again.

‘My Lordy, but he do sing sweet,’ said the third man in the line.

By the time the fifth man came over him Carl was no longer screaming. When the 
last man was finished, he shook his head sorrowfully as he pulled away.

‘Seems to me like he gone and died on us, man.’

Congo had been resting on the bunk beside Carl. Now he stood up and said, 
‘Naw, he still breathing. If he breathing, he still ripe for love.’ He 
stepped up behind Carl once more.

The trusty orderly from the sick bay had been invited to the party in both his 
personal and professional capacity. At last he came forward in his professional 
role and felt for Carl’s pulse under his chin at the carotid artery.

‘This old boy had enough for tonight. Help me get him downstairs and he will 
be ready for some more fun come two, three weeks.’

*

By dawn Carl was in a critical condition from shock and blood loss. The doctor 
from headquarters was called in. He ordered Carl to be moved to the main 
medical facility at Huntsville State Penitentiary.

In the operating theatre Carl’s lower abdominal cavity was aspirated by 
suction pump and almost two litres of blood and human semen were removed from 
inside him. Then the physician sutured the torn and leaking blood vessels and 
surgically repaired the injuries to his lower colon and finally administered 
three whole litres of blood by transfusion.

During the time he was in the Huntsville sanatorium Carl was allowed to make 
telephone calls and receive visitors. He phoned the Carson National Bank in 
Houston and asked his account manager to visit him. Carl was an important 
client, so the account manager responded promptly.

Carl had worked for his adoptive father and the Bannock Oil company for two 
years and two months before his arrest. At the beginning his salary had been 
set by Henry at a handsome one hundred and ten thousand dollars a month. Henry 
was a firm believer in both the carrot and the stick. He also believed that his 
only son deserved to be treated like royalty.

To Henry’s amazement and deep gratification Carl almost immediately displayed 
extraordinary business acumen far beyond that which Henry had expected from one 
of his age and experience. By the end of the first year Henry realized with 
immense pride that Carl was a financial genius whose natural endowments matched 
and in some cases exceeded his own. Carl soon demonstrated an uncanny ability 
to smell profits from as far down wind as a hungry hyena can smell a rotting 
carcass. Carl’s salary climbed steeply as his talents unfolded and blossomed. 
By the end of his second year he had earned his place on the board of Bannock 
Oil, and his salary and his director’s fees totalled in excess of two hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars a month. The Henry Bannock Family Trust in terms of 
its trust deed had been obligated to pay him out an additional sum three times 
greater than the amount of his personal earnings. The consequences of his 
father’s largesse were that even after meticulously paying his taxes Carl had 
amassed a credit balance of well over five million dollars, so the account 
manager responded promptly.

On the sixth day Carl was sufficiently recovered from his rectal injuries to be 
transferred from Huntsville back to the sick bay in the Holloway unit. He took 
with him the new cheque book which his account manager had provided. From the 
sick bay Carl was able to get a message to Lucas Heller via the medical 
orderly. The message was that Lucas should visit him if he wished to learn 
something to his benefit.

Lucas condescended to come downstairs to see Carl, mainly for the opportunity 
to mock him as he lay in bed.

To get the conversation rolling, and as a token of his good faith, Carl handed 
Lucas a cash cheque for $5,000 drawn on the Carson National Bank. Lucas read 
the figures with awe. He had seldom had that much money in his hands at one 
time, but experience had taught him not to place his trust in fairy godmothers. 
He refused to believe this stroke of fortune until he had an opportunity to 
hurry into town and present the cheque at the local branch of the bank.

The cashier honoured it without a quibble. The scales fell from the eyes of 
Lucas Heller and he became a believer. He rushed back to the Holloway unit and 
visited Carl again. On this occasion his manners were deeply deferential and 
obsequious.

Carl ordered him next to carry a message to Johnny Congo on death row. Carl had 
by now fully appraised all the underlying political structures of the Holloway 
unit. He had learned that Johnny Congo wielded enormous influence throughout 
the prison. Like some grotesque man-eating spider he sat at the centre of his 
web and manipulated the strands that reached as far as the warden’s office.

The warden had come to rely heavily on Congo to keep order among the prison 
inmates. If Johnny passed the word for ‘Peace and cooperation’ then the 
administration of the unit was able to maintain some semblance of order in the 
midst of a system which seemed specifically designed to produce chaos.

However, if Johnny Congo said ‘Riot!’ then fires broke out throughout the 
unit; guards were knifed in the workshops, or in the galleries or on the 
catwalks; the inmates seized control of the dining halls and the prison yard. 
They broke up the furniture and fittings. They murdered a few of their 
companions to work off old grudges or in obedience to Johnny Congo’s orders. 
They hurled missiles and chanted abuse at the guards, until the National Guard 
was called out in full riot gear, and the warden’s performance ratings 
plummeted.

Johnny Congo had won special privileges from the administration for his 
cooperation. He had his pick of the prettiest new prisoners as soon as they 
arrived in the unit, as Carl had experienced at first hand. His cell was never 
searched, so his stash of drugs and other luxuries was inviolate. He was even 
allowed to have a telephone in his cell so he was able to communicate with his 
contacts and criminal associates in the outside world. His death sentence was 
blocked somewhere in the system; rumour was that the state governor had seen to 
that. The smart money was betting that Johnny would die of old age without any 
help from the man with the lethal needle in the white-tiled execution chamber.

If any person incurred Johnny Congo’s displeasure it was only a matter of 
days before the issue was terminally settled with the blade of a knife in the 
prison yard, or in the small hours of the morning in the privacy of the 
offender’s own cell, which would have been conveniently left unlocked by the 
Level Supervisor.

It was bruited abroad that Johnny Congo’s influence reached out far beyond 
the prison walls. It was believed that he had maintained strong ties with 
criminal syndicates and gangs in all of Texas and the surrounding states. For a 
very reasonable price he could fix things in cities as far off as San Diego and 
Frisco.

It took Lucas Heller almost a week to set up the meeting between Carl and 
Johnny Congo, but finally the office of the supervisor of death row was put at 
their disposal, and the two of them came together at three o’clock on a 
Sunday morning when the rest of the unit had been locked down for the night. 
The Level Supervisor and four of his guards waited outside the door, but did 
not interfere.

Once Carl and Congo were alone they assessed each other warily, like two 
black-maned lions from rival prides meeting in disputed territory on the 
African veld. By this time Congo had learned that Carl was not just a pretty 
face. He knew that Carl was Henry Bannock’s son, and he knew the power and 
wealth of the Bannock Oil Corporation.

‘You wanna talk with me, white boy?’

‘I need your protection, Mr Congo.’ Carl wasted no time.

‘You can bet your sweet ass you do, else sure enough it ain’t gonna be 
sweet or pretty much longer. But why should I want to protect you?’

‘I can pay you.’

‘Yeah, man, that might make me wanna do it. But how much money we talking 
about here, boy?’

‘You tell me, sir.’

Congo picked his nose while he pondered the question. Finally he examined the 
crust of dried mucus he had retrieved from his left nostril and flicked it off 
his finger, before he stated his price. ‘Five thousand dollars each and every 
month, in ones and fives delivered here in Holloway. Ain’t much good to me on 
the outside.’ He had set the figure outrageously high, expecting Carl to 
bargain.

‘That figure is ridiculous, Mr Congo,’ Carl said, and Johnny Congo bridled. 
His fists clenched into mighty black hams. ‘For a man of your stature and 
exalted position I would expect to pay ten or even fifteen thousand dollars a 
month.’

Johnny Congo blinked and his fists unfolded. He began to smile in a fatherly 
manner. ‘I hear you, white boy, and I like what I hear. Fifteen thou’ 
sounds just about right to me.’

‘I am sure I will be able to arrange the delivery route from my bank to 
wherever you want it. Just tell me what I must do and I will do it. My hand on 
it, sir.’

Congo took the proffered hand and as he shook it he rumbled, ‘There is more 
than your hand on it, boy. Your sweet life is on it.’

‘I understand that, Mr Congo. However, if you really want to make a great 
deal of money we should go into business together.’

‘What kind of business?’ Congo stopped just short of scoffing. ‘Lay it on 
me, white boy.’

Carl spoke for the next forty minutes and Congo leaned forward and listened 
almost without interruption. By the end of that time he was grinning and his 
eyes were shining.

‘How do I know you going to deliver, boy?’ he asked at last.

‘If I don’t, then you can withdraw your protection, Mr Congo.’

It was a momentous meeting out of which would emerge an unholy alliance; a 
crooked young genius combining his talents with those of a ruthless monster who 
wielded the powers of life and death. Both men were psychopaths; totally 
lacking compassion, scruples or remorse.

Over the following years the profits of their various enterprises, initially 
conceived by Carl and then fostered by Johnny Congo, were first laundered and 
sanitized. Johnny’s friends on the outside were eager to assist in this 
process. After the money was clean it was distributed to Carl personally in the 
form of dividends and director’s fees through a company in the British Virgin 
Islands that Carl had set up while he was still at Princeton.

The value of the end receipts was quadrupled by the Henry Bannock Family Trust. 
Finally, the grand total was shared by Carl and Johnny Congo and secreted in 
numbered bank accounts in Hong Kong, Moscow, Singapore and other cities around 
the globe where even the muscled arm of the US Internal Revenue Service could 
not reach.

To facilitate the operation of their enterprises both in and outside of the 
prison it soon became necessary for Carl and Johnny to take in Marco Merkowski, 
the warden of the Holloway Correctional Unit, as a sleeping partner. Once they 
had involved him in his first illegal scheme Marco found himself completely in 
the thrall of Carl Bannock and Johnny Congo.

*

Carl was moved from the sixth level of the unit to the first level, where jail 
trusties and other inmates with unblemished records of good behaviour were 
accommodated. The cell that Carl was allocated was three times the size of his 
old one on the sixth level. Carl was provided with a television set and his own 
private telephone.

The telephone was an essential element in the management of the business 
interests of the alliance. Fortuitously, Carl was working into a raging bull 
market. All his former contacts were still in place and his instincts for 
profit were unimpaired.

There was still a great deal of time in his unhurried prison days for Carl to 
turn his fecund mind to planning for the future. By this time he had passed 
over five years in detention. His prison record was spotless; Warden Merkowski 
had taken care of that. The original minimum sentence of fifteen years handed 
down by Judge Chamberlain had been reduced on appeal to a minimum of twelve 
years. Carl had nearly reached the halfway mark. He was still only thirty-one 
years old, a cunning street-smart multimillionaire, eager to take on the world 
on his own terms as soon as he stepped out of the gates of the Holloway 
Correctional Unit.

Through his own and Johnny Congo’s multitudinous outside contacts Carl was 
kept fully informed of his father’s movements, and the movements of all the 
other beneficiaries of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

Most unfortunately for Carl’s ultimate financial aspirations, his father had 
met a professional women’s tennis champion thirty years his junior, 
considerably younger than Carl Bannock himself. Carl had seen photographs of 
this woman. Her name was Hazel Nelson and she was blonde, athletic and lovely. 
Only a few months after meeting, his father and Hazel were married in a 
splendid wedding ceremony at the Forest Drive residence in Houston. Less than a 
year later Hazel gave birth to a girl they named Cayla. Henry’s record of 
fathering only female offspring remained intact. From Carl’s point of view, 
this awkward new adventure of his father’s had added two more names to the 
role of beneficiaries of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

The full list including Carl himself now amounted to a total of seven persons: 
Henry Bannock and Hazel Bannock and her infant daughter Cayla; Carl’s mother 
Marlene Imelda Bannock, who had retained his name after Henry had divorced her; 
and Carl’s two half-sisters, Sacha Jean and Bryoni Lee. Using the market 
value of the Bannock Oil Corporation stock as quoted on the NY Stock Exchange 
as a guide, Carl estimated the present total value of the assets of the Henry 
Bannock Family Trust to be in the region of $111 billion. Carl fiercely 
resented having to share even that vast sum with five or six other persons.

From his prison cell Carl followed with intense and partisan interest his 
father’s long-running petition to the Supreme Court in Washington DC to have 
Carl Peter Bannock removed from the list of beneficiaries to the Family Trust 
on the grounds that he was not blood related to the donor and that his 
conviction on a series of major felony charges had disqualified him. When the 
learned justices of the Supreme Court eventually rejected Henry Bannock’s 
motion unanimously, Carl knew that death alone could deny him his share of the 
Trust funds.

Carl and Johnny Congo hosted a discreet little celebratory party in death row, 
attended by Warden Merkowski and a number of young female escorts brought down 
from Huntsville for the occasion. Although Carl and Johnny Congo had years ago 
become lovers, they were quite happy to share their conjugal bed with one or 
two pretty girls or even young boys if these were available.

The Supreme Court judgement in his favour set Carl applying his mind seriously 
to the many remarkable conditions that his father had laid down in the Trust 
Deed of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

Carl had developed an excellent memory during his years of study, and though he 
had not held a copy of the actual Trust Deed in his hands since the day he 
worked his way into his father’s strongroom, he had made detailed notes of 
its contents. All this time one particular provision that his father had 
written into the deed had tantalized Carl. The provision was that when there 
remained only a single living beneficiary, then the trustees of the Henry 
Bannock Family Trust must wind up the Trust and the entire remaining assets 
must be divided equally between a charity that Henry favoured and the sole 
surviving beneficiary, be it man or woman.

Carl decided that the time had come for him to take full advantage of this 
clause while he was still hidden from public view in the depths of the Holloway 
Correctional Unit, and while the concrete walls that imprisoned him would also 
act as a shield to deflect suspicion from him, and provide him with an 
unshakeable alibi.

Henry himself was invulnerable, but he was by now aging rapidly. At the rate 
that he lived his life he could not last very much longer. The word from 
Carl’s informants was that Henry was already beginning to falter. Carl knew 
that he had the Grim Reaper as his ally and he was prepared to wait.

Hazel and her young daughter Cayla were protected by the heavy mantle of 
majesty that Henry Bannock cast over all who surrounded him closely. Hazel and 
Cayla were not yet vulnerable. Their time would come once Henry was out of the 
way.

The same did not apply to his drunken mother, Marlene Imelda, whom he despised, 
nor did it apply to his half-sisters, whom he hated deeply and bitterly. They 
were directly responsible for his incarceration and the many wasted years of 
his life that he was being forced to spend behind concrete and steel barriers 
in the company of creatures more vile than any jungle beast.

Carl learned that the mental condition of his eldest sister Sacha had improved 
so dramatically after he had been imprisoned that her doctors had been able to 
discharge her from the Nine Elms clinic into the care of her mother. Sacha had 
gone to live with Marlene in the Cayman Islands. Mother and daughter had 
flourished in this new intimate relationship. Marlene was not cured of her 
dipsomania; however, charge of her firstborn daughter had given her the 
incentive she needed to become teetotal. She now devoted all her love and 
attention to Sacha, and Sacha responded gratifyingly.

When Henry Bannock married Hazel Nelson and Cayla was born, Bryoni decided to 
leave Forest Drive and move to the Caymans to be with her mother and her own 
sister. At this time Bryoni was not much younger than Hazel, her step-mother. 
Both girls had very strong and competitive personalities and they were both 
fiercely possessive of Henry Bannock. In different circumstances they would 
have probably become friends, but when baby Cayla was born the advantage swung 
heavily in Hazel’s favour. Now she was not only the new mistress of Forest 
Drive, but was also the mother of Henry’s youngest daughter. Henry was 
besotted with Hazel, and when she began to take an intense interest in the 
affairs of the Bannock Oil Corporation he encouraged her. Soon Henry elevated 
Hazel to the role of company director that Carl had vacated when he was 
convicted.

Hazel took her seat at the boardroom table at Henry’s right hand.

She became all things to Henry Bannock: lover, wife, mother of his child, 
business partner and boon companion.

On the other hand, Bryoni had no particular interest in the Bannock Oil 
Corporation. She had all the money she needed from the Family Trust, and she 
was not avaricious. She had few of the other talents that Hazel possessed in 
abundance and which made her so valuable and desirable to Bryoni’s father. 
Bryoni could not compete with her at any level. So she flew down to Grand 
Cayman in the Caribbean where Marlene and Sacha welcomed her with pathetic 
eagerness, and where she was able to serve a purpose that was both highly 
valued by the two people she loved dearly and totally fulfilling to Bryoni 
herself.

From Carl’s standpoint the move was also highly favourable. He now had three 
of the beneficiaries of the Family Trust removed from under the shield of his 
father and from the jurisdiction and protection of the government of the United 
States of America to an isolated island where they were a great deal more 
vulnerable and accessible to the attentions of the friends of Johnny Congo.

Carl laid his plans with great care and attention to detail. Congo was an 
enthusiastic participant in the enterprise. He had cocaine syndicate 
connections in Honduras and Colombia who were always interested in making a few 
extra dollars in more mundane side projects.

Johnny’s contact in Honduras was Señor Alonso Almanza. He based himself in 
the port of La Ceiba, where he kept two very fast forty-foot ocean-going 
speedboats. These were usually employed in nocturnally running white goods 
north to Mexico, Texas or Louisiana. However the US Coast Guard had recently 
become a trifle bothersome and so his fine boats were underutilized.

The distance from La Ceiba to the Cayman Islands was less than five-hundred 
nautical miles; an easy run for one of those big fast Chris-Craft.

‘Alonso is a good man, very trustworthy. He doesn’t mind a little wet work 
if the price is attractive. I think we could do a lot worse,’ Johnny Congo 
told Carl.

‘I like the sound of him, and his price is good. But, what about the initial 
survey? Do you have somebody on Grand Cayman who can do that for us?’

‘No problem, white boy.’ The nickname which had started out as deliberately 
pejorative had now become a term of endearment between them. ‘There is a 
realtor in George Town who once did a bit of work for me. He isn’t fussy. We 
just tell him we want to make an anonymous bid for a property on the island and 
that we need a full description of everything in it including the servants and 
occupants.’

‘Get on to him, Blackbird.’ Anybody else who called Johnny Congo that to 
his face would die prematurely and painfully. ‘Most of all we need to know 
about the security on the estate. If I know my daddy, and that I do, it will be 
tight. Obviously we must know which bedroom my mother sleeps in and where to 
find my two sisters. It’s a good bet their bedrooms will be close alongside 
their darling mama’s.’

Johnny’s contact on Grand Cayman was a retired Englishman named Trevor Jones 
who had decided to spend his autumnal years in a tropical island paradise. He 
had discovered to his chagrin that paradise comes at a price and his pension 
was not stretching as far as he had hoped. He took this lucrative assignment 
from Carl Bannock to heart. He uplifted from the government surveyor’s office 
a copy of the blueprint plans of The Moorings, the Bannocks’ beachfront home. 
Then he ran to earth a former chambermaid of Mrs Marlene Bannock who had been 
fired from her employment for stealing a pair of pearl earrings from Miss Sacha 
Bannock’s jewellery box. Her name was Gladys, and she had left The Moorings 
with a chip on her shoulder large enough to qualify as a log.

Together Gladys and Trevor Jones pored over the house plan. She showed him in 
which bedrooms the three members of the family slept and where the security 
guardroom was located. She knew the patrol routines of the guards. There were 
punch-clocks set up at various points on the property that kept the guards 
working to a strict timetable. The shifts changed precisely on the hour. So the 
movements of the security guards were predictable. Gladys was also able to 
provide a roster of the domestic staff. Most of these were not required to work 
on Sunday. They only returned to their duties after the weekend.

Gladys knew the exact location of every one of the numerous alarm sensors on 
the property. Naturally, the passwords had been changed after she was fired, 
but her common-law husband was still employed at The Moorings as a sous-chef. 
He willingly supplied her with the new passwords.

The gap through the coral reef was marked with light buoys and the channel to 
the anchorage in front of The Moorings was also buoyed. Jones went out in his 
little fishing skiff and took surreptitious soundings and made one or two other 
arrangements. At high spring tides the channel was a goodly three metres deep 
at the shallowest point, more than sufficient water for even one of the big 
Chris-Craft.

This entire package of information was sent to Johnny Congo. Its total cost to 
Carl was well under $4,000, which he considered excellent value.

The information was forwarded to Señor Alonso Almanza in La Ceiba with further 
detailed instructions and a bank transfer payment of $75,000 against a contract 
completion price of $250,000.

‘I’m going to tell you a little secret, Blackbird.’ Carl grinned at 
Johnny Congo. ‘If you have enough money, you can do anything you want, and 
have anything you want. Nobody is going to stop you.’

‘Right on, white boy!’ Johnny lifted his right hand and gave him a high 
five.

*

Twenty-eight days later Señor Almanza’s Chris-Craft Pluma de Mar used the 
light of the full moon to creep quietly through the gap in the reef into Old 
Man Bay on the north side of Grand Cayman. Her hull was painted matt black, so 
even by the light of the moon she was almost invisible. She had cleared La 
Ceiba at noon the previous day, and had timed her arrival precisely for a 
quarter to three on a Sunday morning; the witching hour when only highwaymen, 
werewolves and pirates should be abroad.

The Pluma de Mar carried a crew of eleven. They were dressed in black 
tracksuits and wore black head-hoods with cut-outs for their eyes and mouths. 
They tied up to one of the channel markers seventy metres off the beachfront of 
The Moorings. Trevor Jones had placed a tiny radio beacon on the marker to 
guide them in. Leaving one crewman on board to take care of the vessel, they 
launched an inflatable dingy and the battery-powered outboard engine carried 
them silently ashore.

They hit the beach at exactly three o’clock, when they knew that the security 
patrols would be gathered in the guard room changing shifts and drinking 
coffee. Two of the masked men ran ahead to bypass and disable the alarm sensors 
and clear the way for those who followed. When the assault team burst into the 
guard room they took the four men gathered there completely off-guard. Within 
minutes they had gagged and bound all of them with duct tape, and shut down the 
alarm system at the main control board.

Then they raced around the swimming pool and jemmied open the door into the 
main house. They knew exactly where they were headed, through the living rooms 
and up the main staircase to the bedroom suites. At the head of the stairs they 
split into three groups. Each group went quickly to the suite that they had 
been allocated. They rushed in while the occupants were still sleeping soundly. 
They hauled them out of their beds and bound their hands at the wrists with 
duct tape. Then they were dragged down the staircase and out onto the pool 
deck. The pool deck was discreetly screened by high walls and tropical 
vegetation to allow the Bannock women to indulge their penchant for nude 
sunbathing.

One of the gang produced a movie camera from his rucksack. He was a 
professional maker of hardcore pornographic films from Guadalajara in Mexico. 
In passable English he told the three terrified and weeping captives, ‘My 
name is Amaranthus. It is my pleasure to make a documentary film of you. Please 
take no notice of me and try not to look into the lens of my camera unless I 
ask you to.’ He stepped back and aimed his camera at them.

The gang leader took his place in front of them. ‘I am Miguel. You will do as 
I tell you, or I hurt you bad. Name? Nombre?’ he yelled at them, forcing each 
of the women in turn to announce her name for the benefit of Amaranthus and his 
camera. Sacha Jean was struck dumb with terror. Bryoni spoke up for her and 
gave her name.

‘She is my sister Sacha Jean Bannock. She is sick. Please don’t hurt her.’

Sacha fell to her knees and explosively soiled her pyjama bottoms. Miguel 
laughed and kicked her. ‘Filthy cow! Stand up!’ He kicked her again. Bryoni 
reached down with her trussed hands and helped Sacha back onto her feet.

The gang leader turned to Marlene and he produced a slip of paper from his zip 
pocket. ‘These are my orders.’ He read from it in his thick Hispanic 
accent. ‘Marlene Imelda Bannock. You are to be executed. Your death is to be 
witnessed by your daughters, Sacha Jean and Bryoni Lee. Your execution will be 
filmed for the benefit of all interested parties. Thereafter your daughters are 
to be imprisoned for life in a foreign country.’

Sacha’s legs collapsed under her again. Bryoni could not hold her and she 
fell to the marble coping that edged the pool. She rolled herself into a ball 
and wailed shrilly. She started banging her forehead on the marble with such 
force that one of her eyebrows split open and blood trickled down into her 
eyes. Bryoni knelt beside Sacha and tried to prevent her injuring herself 
further.

As three of the men dragged Marlene away she called back desperately. ‘Be 
brave, Sacha! Don’t cry, baby. Take care of her, Bryoni.’

They took Marlene down the pool steps and into the water. It was waist deep. 
Bright underwater floodlights lit the stage for Amaranthus, who knelt on the 
edge of the pool and filmed it all.

One of the crew members stood on each side of Marlene, holding her arms. They 
looked up at Miguel on the edge of the pool above them.

Miguel told them, ‘Bueno! Hold her under.’

Two of them forced Marlene’s head below the surface of the water. The third 
man grasped her ankles, and lifted them up high. The top half of Marlene’s 
body was completely immersed. She kicked her legs wildly and her entire body 
bucked and convulsed so violently that the men had difficulty holding her.

‘Enough!’ Miguel shouted. ‘Bring her up for a minute.’ They lifted 
Marlene’s head from the water and she gasped and struggled for breath. Then 
suddenly a mixture of pool water and vomit shot from her gaping mouth, and she 
choked on her next breath.

‘Bueno, that’s good. Put her under again.’ They ducked her head under 
just as she drew breath and Marlene took down a mouthful of water rather than 
air. They repeated the duckings at progressively longer intervals as 
Marlene’s struggles weakened. Amaranthus behind the camera wanted to make the 
most of this scene. This was one of the stipulations that his sponsors had set, 
and Amaranthus understood how fascinating this would be to them.

Torn by her love for her sister and her mother, Bryoni left Sacha and crawled 
to Miguel and tried to hold his legs.

‘She is my mother. Please don’t do this to her.’

He kicked her away, and called to the three men in the pool, ‘Now we will 
finish it. Keep the old bitch under.’

There was a violent burst of bubbles on the surface as Marlene’s lungs 
emptied completely. Her struggles grew weaker and at last stopped.

‘Ha muerto?’ one of them asked. ‘Is she dead?’

‘No, esperar un poco más,’ Miguel ordered. ‘No, wait a little longer.’

Bryoni understood enough Spanish. She crawled back to Miguel and clutched at 
his legs again, ‘Please, señor. Have mercy, I beg of you.’ This time he 
kicked her in the mouth and she fell over backwards, holding her bleeding lips.

‘Your turn will come soon enough,’ he jeered at her. ‘But first we must 
sample your meat; both you and your loco sister.’ He pulled back his sleeve 
and looked at his watch. Then he spoke to the men in the water. ‘Bueno! That 
should do it. Bring her up. Let’s take a look at her.’

One of the men grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted Marlene’s face out of 
the water. Her skin was waxy pale. Her eyes were wide open and staring. Her 
hair had come down in streamers over her face like seaweed exposed on a rock at 
low tide. Water drooled from her open mouth.

‘Leave her there,’ Miguel ordered and they released her and waded to the 
steps, leaving Marlene’s corpse floating face-down in the pool.

‘We have been here too long already. It’s time to go,’ Miguel told them. 
‘Get that dirty puta cleaned up.’ He pointed at Sacha. ‘The jefe will 
kill us if we get shit all over his beautiful boat.’

They stripped Sacha’s soiled pyjamas off her and threw her naked into the 
pool beside her mother’s corpse. One of them stooped over Bryoni and cut the 
duct tape from her wrists.

‘Get in there with your pig sister and wash the shit off her,’ he ordered 
her in Spanish.

Bryoni waded out to Sacha and washed her body and cleaned the blood from the 
wound above her eye, then led her back to the pool steps with one arm around 
her shoulders. Sacha kept whimpering and looking back at Marlene’s floating 
corpse. ‘What is wrong with Mummy? Why doesn’t she want to talk to me, 
Bryoni?’ Sacha had regressed to her five-year-old state.

*

The dawn was a riot of majestic cumulus clouds set alight by the rays of the 
rising sun. The Pluma de Mar was running hard for the south over an easy and 
unctuous swell. She was two hundred nautical miles south of Grand Cayman, but 
she was not on a direct return course for La Ceiba in Honduras.

She was headed instead for the port of Cartagena in Colombia. This was a 
deliberate ploy ordered by Carl and Johnny Congo. The Pluma de Mar had left La 
Ceiba with only eleven crew members on board. She must return with the same 
complement; otherwise the suspicions of the port officials would be roused.

As soon as the sun cleared the horizon Miguel ordered the captives to be 
brought up from the forecastle to the cockpit. Sacha was completely confused 
and disorientated. She did not understand what was happening to them. She was 
even unaware of her own nudity. She stood blinking in the bright sunlight, and 
she kept asking Bryoni where their mother was. ‘Who are all these strange 
men, Bree? Why are they staring at me? Why did we leave Mummy behind, Bree?’ 
She had retreated into the profound depths of her dementia.

The crew had brought up some of the gaily coloured cushions from the benches in 
the main cabin and strewn them on the deck of the cockpit to serve as a 
mattress. All of them had removed their black tracksuits and hoods, and had 
stripped down to tee shirts and shorts. Now that the raid was successfully 
completed, they were in a jovial and celebratory mood. They were joking and 
laughing, drinking Mexican Corona beer from the can as they crowded around the 
two girls. Miguel came down the companionway ladder from the flying bridge. He 
pointed at Bryoni. ‘Get the clothes off that one. No secrets on board this 
boat. Let’s see what she has got there for us.’

While Amaranthus filmed them, they pulled Bryoni away from her sister and tore 
her flimsy nightdress from her back. One of them balled it in his fist and 
threw it over the side of the boat. The crew crowded around her, reaching out 
to grope her buttocks and fondle her breasts. Bryoni tried to fend them off by 
twisting her body around and striking out at their hands. Miguel intervened and 
pushed them back. ‘No fighting!’ he warned them. ‘Everybody gets a go. By 
the time we reach Cartagena you will all have had so much of this pussy that 
you’ll be sick of the sight of it.’ He held up a fan of playing cards. 
‘Draw your card, caballeros. The numbers are Ace to Jack. Ace gets first 
turn, and Jack comes last.’ They pushed forward to take a card out of his 
hand. One of them let out a triumphant whoop and held up the ace of spades.

‘Beat that you whore-sons!’ he challenged them.

‘Stand back!’ Miguel chuckled. ‘Feliciano gets first shot. Which one do 
you want, amigo?’

‘I’ll take the fat one.’ Feliciano elbowed his way towards Sacha. She 
smiled at him as he took her hand. She still didn’t understand what was 
happening. She followed him compliantly as he led her to the pile of bench 
cushions on the deck and pushed her down on them.

‘No, Sacha! Don’t let him touch you.’ Bryoni was struggling with the men 
who were restraining her. ‘He is going to hurt you, baby.’

Sacha was smiling happily now. Her mood swings were quick and unpredictable. 
‘It’s all right, Bree. I like him. He is such a nice man.’

Then Feliciano knelt in front of her and pulled down his shorts. Sacha’s 
damaged brain made another instantaneous connection to her brother Carl Peter 
in a similar pose and she recoiled in fear. It took four of the crew to hold 
her down before Feliciano was able to enter her. Sacha was still shrieking as 
Feliciano rolled off, and grunted, ‘Fantástica! Mejores de la historia! 
Fantastic! The best ever! I love to feel them buck and hear them squeal.’

Bryoni was dragged over and thrown down on the floral patterned cushions as the 
next man in line came forward eagerly. She also began to scream and struggle, 
but the same four men pinioned her limbs, and spread her legs wide apart. 
Amaranthus kept on filming.

By the middle of the afternoon as the Pluma de Mar roared on into the south 
both the sisters were in a stupor. Neither of them had the strength nor the 
will to continue resisting. One of the gang stood up after covering Bryoni for 
the third time, and complained to Miguel, ‘She is like meat in the butcher 
shop; dead and cold.’

‘Bueno, I can fix that. Bring them down to the main cabin,’ Miguel told him.

They carried Bryoni down the companionway and laid her on the mess table. 
Miguel wound a length of surgical rubber tubing around her upper arm and 
tightened it until the veins in the crook of her elbow stood out blue and 
proud. He poured a heaped teaspoonful of white heroin powder into a small 
bottle of distilled water and shook it until the powder dissolved. Then he drew 
it up in a disposable syringe and shot it into Bryoni’s distended vein. 
Within a few minutes Bryoni was resuscitating as the rush of the drug hit her. 
She started screaming and struggling again. They dragged her up to the cockpit 
where the man whose turn it was came forward, lowering his shorts and working 
up his penis with his hand.

In the cabin below Miguel turned his attention to Sacha and prepared a second 
shot of heroin for her. Amaranthus recorded the entire process.

That evening, twenty nautical miles off the Colombian port of Cartagena, in the 
short tropical twilight, the Pluma de Mar made a rendezvous with a working 
barge from the port. Once again the two sisters were trussed and gagged with 
duct tape. Then they were transferred across to the barge, and concealed under 
an old stained tarpaulin in the stern. Amaranthus with his ubiquitous camera 
followed the girls across to the barge. His brief was to stay with them and 
continue filming to the very end.

The Pluma de Mar reversed her course and headed at thirty knots for La Ceiba. 
The barge trundled on into the port of Cartagena.

*

There was an old Ford three-ton truck waiting to meet the barge on one of the 
wharves in a remote section of Cartagena harbour. A fresh team of men was 
waiting to receive them: a driver, his mate and two thugs. The girls were 
quickly transferred ashore and bundled into the back of the truck. Another 
tarpaulin was thrown over them. Amaranthus and the thugs climbed into the rear 
of the truck. The driver and his mate scrambled into the cab. The driver 
started the engine and drove to the harbour gates. A customs official came out 
of his hut. There was a muttered conversation with the driver and a wad of 
banknotes changed hands. The customs man stood back and waved them through and 
they drove into Colombia.

They headed southwards for the next six days, over progressively rougher unmade 
roads, through jungle and mountains. At some point they left the state of 
Colombia and crossed another river by ferry into Venezuela. At each stop along 
the way the driver climbed into the back of the truck and gave the girls a shot 
of intravenous heroin. By this stage, as soon as they saw the needle, the 
sisters were holding out their right arms willingly, eager for the solace that 
the drug provided them.

As soon as they were revived the driver’s mate flagged down any other passing 
vehicles on the road and opened the canvas flap on the back of the Ford to 
display the girls to these prospective customers. If the girls tried to resist 
they were beaten, and denied their next fix of heroin. By the time they reached 
Minas de Ye each of the sisters had been used so often that they had lost count 
of all the men who had climbed into the back of the old Ford to be with them.

Minas de Ye was deep in the jungles of the Amazon basin. It was an area along 
both banks of the Rio de Oro, a tributary of the Amazon, which cut through the 
mountains. An army of illegal gold miners laboured in the diggings, risking 
their lives for a few grains of the alluvial yellow metal.

The truck stopped for the last time at a large ramshackle building on the river 
bank, where one of the many gold buyers from the city of Calabozo had set up 
business. The buyer was a fat and shaggy rogue named Goyo who sat behind his 
gold scales on the veranda and haggled with the miners who brought down the 
meagre yellow flakes and beads from their sluice boxes in the hills.

Goyo’s woman was a shrewish creature, as thin as her husband was fat. Her 
name was Dolorita. She sold marijuana, heroin and homebrewed tequila to her 
husband’s customers. She also operated a brothel in the back rooms of the 
rambling building. Sacha and Bryoni were unloaded from the truck and handed 
over to Dolorita, who seemed to be anticipating their arrival. She at once 
forced the girls to strip off the rags that covered them and she examined them 
quickly.

‘They have already been used up. This was not what I saw in the 
photographs,’ she complained when she saw their bruises. ‘But it is too 
late now. I can’t send them back. I have already paid over a hundred dollars 
each for them. Anyway, we always need new girls.’ She turned to her overseer. 
His name was Silvestre and he was a villainous-looking brute with a marked 
squint. When he smiled, which was seldom, he exposed one gold tooth and another 
jet black one sitting side by side in the front of his lower jaw.

‘You better try to get some of my money back, Silvestre. Do you hear me? Make 
them work hard,’ Dolorita ordered him.

Silvestre led the two sisters around to the back of the building and shoved 
them into a dingy little room in which they would live and work on the two 
filthy mattresses that were laid side by side in the centre of the mud floor. 
There was no plumbing, and the girls had no alternative but to bathe in and 
drink from a bucket of river water in one corner of the room. There was an 
identical bucket standing beside the first one. This was the latrine which 
served not only Sacha and Bryoni but any of their clients who felt the need. 
The contaminated river water gave both the girls intermittent low-grade 
dysentery.

Dolorita set her prices so low that at all times there was a line of three or 
four men waiting their turn at the door. They were all miners and their bodies 
reeked with the sweat of their labour, while their mouths stank of rotting 
teeth and cheap tequila. Their bodies and ragged clothing were plastered with 
red mud from the gold diggings.

Bryoni never knew how many other girls were working in the adjacent rooms. All 
she knew was that there were many of them. Dolorita fed her working girls on a 
diet of minimal amounts of plain boiled cassava and much larger doses of 
low-grade heroin. Her turnover of girls from disease, malnutrition and drug 
overdose was brisk.

The roof of the shack was thatched with palm fronds. The tropical rain dripped 
through and the girls were seldom completely dry. Within the first week Sacha 
developed a persistent cough. She refused to eat more than a few mouthfuls of 
the foul food, and she lost weight at an alarming rate.

The walls of their room were made from unpainted cardboard packing cases, so 
flimsy that they were able to hear almost everything happening in the other 
rooms around them. Two or three times a week Bryoni would hear Dolorita call 
Silvestre and tell him, ‘This bitch is finished. Take her down to the farm.’

Bryoni had no idea what she meant by the farm. She had long ago descended into 
a fog of pain, exhaustion and heroin. Like Sacha, she was slowly losing her 
grasp on reality.

Every few days Amaranthus would come to drink tequila with Silvestre and to 
take more film footage of Bryoni and Sacha in their squalor. Bryoni was hardly 
aware of his presence. The only thing that she agonized over was the swift 
deterioration of Sacha’s health. Bryoni realized at last that Sacha was dying.

She pleaded with Dolorita and Silvestre in her elementary Spanish to fetch a 
doctor, but they laughed at her.

‘Who is going to pay for this doctor, querido?’ Dolorita mocked her. ‘If 
your sister worked harder, I might buy a little medicine for her cough, but she 
is a lazy cow. Why should I spend good money on her?’

Three days later Sacha developed a burning fever, and again Bryoni begged 
Dolorita to get help for her. ‘My sister is very sick. Just feel how hot her 
body is.’

‘Bueno! The men they like it that way. They like putting their bread into a 
nice hot oven.’ Dolorita cackled with laughter.

In the early hours of the following morning Sacha died. Bryoni was holding her 
in her arms as she felt the life go out of her. Her body began to cool and 
Bryoni hardly had the strength to weep for her one last time.

In the dawn Dolorita and Silvestre came to the little room and stood over 
Sacha’s skeletal naked body.

‘Si,’ Dolorita said briskly. ‘She is finished. Take her down to the farm, 
Silvestre.’

Bryoni still did not know where or what the farm was and she did not care. She 
had lost Sacha, and after that nothing else mattered. At last she had given up 
the struggle. She just wanted to die and be with Sacha, wherever she had gone.

*

Amaranthus the cameraman came the next afternoon and he was furious to learn 
that Sacha was dead. Bryoni heard him shouting at Silvestre on the veranda. 
‘Why didn’t you send for me? They are going to be angry with me now. This 
is going to cost me money. It is my job to film everything; especially if one 
of the bitches dies. They will cut my pay. You should have sent a message to 
me.’

One of the gold miners was with Bryoni while this conversation was going on 
outside her window. He was rutting noisily on top of her, grunting like an 
animal in her ear, so she had difficulty understanding what Amaranthus had 
said, but she heard clearly Silvestre’s reply. ‘Don’t worry, Amaranthus 
my friend. The other puta won’t be too far behind her. I will call you when 
it happens. Now, come and I will let you buy me a glass of tequila.’ He took 
Amaranthus by the arm and led him up to the barroom. They sat at one of the 
small and grubby tables and drank the first tequila. Amaranthus’s mood 
improved and he brought Silvestre a second drink.

‘I would like to see this farm that you and Dolorita are always talking 
about. I would like to take some film. Will you show it to me, Silvestre?’

‘Buy me one more drink first.’

Silvestre drained his glass and then stood up. ‘Bueno, amigo. Come with me 
and I will show you our famous farm.’

He led Amaranthus down through the banana plantation towards the bank of the 
river and then turned into a grove of cashew trees. Suddenly Amaranthus sniffed 
the air and exclaimed with disgust, ‘Poof! What it is that revolting smell?’

‘What you smell is our butchery and hog pens.’

‘It’s a pig farm, is it?’

‘Yes, our pork sausages are the finest in South America. We send all we can 
make to the big towns.’

They came out of the trees into a large clearing in the jungle. Silvestre led 
him down a path between two rows of hog pens. The animals in them were black 
Iberian pigs.

Silvestre stopped beside one pen in which there were eight enormous boars. Each 
of them stood as high as a man’s hip. Short sharp tusks protruded from their 
jaws. The coarse bristles on their humped backs formed a dense mane. They 
snuffled the air hungrily and champed their jaws, grunting with excitement, 
watching Silvestre with glistening and greedy eyes.

‘They recognize you. They are very happy to see you,’ Amaranthus remarked.

‘They are my pets,’ Silvestre agreed. ‘I am the one who feeds them.’ He 
pointed at the largest animal. ‘That one is called Hannibal. By the time he 
goes to the butcher shop to be made into sausages, he will weigh three hundred 
kilos.’

‘He is a monster,’ Amaranthus agreed. ‘What do you feed them on? 
Cassava?’

‘Yes, cassava.’ Silvestre tapped his nose with one finger and his 
expression became cunning and conspiratorial. He dropped his voice. ‘But meat 
also. We feed them plenty of meat.’

‘Where do you get meat from to feed pigs?’ Amaranthus wondered. ‘Few men 
in Minas de Ye can afford to eat even a little of it more than once a month. 
Meat is very expensive.’

‘Not if you run a bordello in Minas de Ye.’ Silvestre was still grinning.

Amaranthus stared at him. ‘No!’ he exclaimed as he caught on to 
Silvestre’s meaning. ‘No. I don’t believe it.’ Then he began to grin 
also. ‘The girls? Is that it?’

‘Si!’ Silvestre was snuffling and grunting with mirth, very much like one 
of his own pigs. ‘Si! When they finish work at the bordello for ever, 
Dolorita sends them down here to the farm.’

‘Is that what you did to the first Yanqui cow when she died?’ Amaranthus 
demanded. ‘You fed her to the pigs?’

Silvestre was laughing so much he could not reply. Amaranthus turned away and 
leaned over the low wall of the hog pen. His mind was racing. As he rolled a 
joint of marijuana, his hands were trembling with excitement. He lit the joint 
and turned back to Silvestre. ‘How would you like me to pay you one hundred 
dollars americano?’

Silvestre stopped laughing abruptly. He thought about what he could do with a 
hundred dollars. He decided he could do a great deal with that sum of money. It 
was almost twice as much as Dolorita paid him for a week of hard work.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to let me film when you bring the other Yanqui puta to the farm, 
to visit your pet Hannibal.’

Silvestre grunted with relief. ‘That is no problem, amigo. I will send word 
to you as soon as she dies. I don’t think she will last much longer. She is 
pining for her sister. Soon she will give up. For a hundred americanos you can 
shoot all the film in your bag.’

‘No!’ Amaranthus contradicted him. ‘No, you don’t understand. I want 
you to bring her to the farm before she dies. I want you to bring her to see 
Hannibal while she can still struggle and kick. I want to film her while she is 
still able to squeal.’

Even Silvestre was stunned by the enormity of the proposition. His face paled 
and he stared at Amaranthus.

‘You mean alive?’ he stammered. ‘You want me to let my pigs eat her while 
she still lives?’ He could hardly believe what he was hearing.

‘Si, amigo. Alive!’

‘Beloved Maria! Now I have heard everything. Give me a suck on your porro.’ 
Silvestre needed time to regain his wits. Amaranthus handed him the cigarette. 
Silvestre inhaled deeply and held the smoke as he spoke.

‘One hundred dollars is not enough!’ he wheezed. ‘I want five hundred.’

‘Three hundred and fifty,’ Amaranthus countered.

‘Four hundred.’

‘Okay! Four hundred,’ Amaranthus agreed happily. He had heard of someone 
who had made a hundred thousand dollars with a six-minute tape by selling it on 
the black market. He had seen that tape. It was as nothing compared to what his 
tape would be.

A million! he dreamed. It could make me a million; perhaps even more.

*

It was Monday morning so Silvestre knew that Dolorita and Goyo would be locked 
in their office behind the bar. They were counting the takings of the week 
before Goyo carried them down to the bank in the town. Silvestre knocked on the 
door.

‘Who is it?’ Dolorita screeched. ‘What do you want? We are busy!’

‘It is me, Silvestre. The second Yanqui puta, the cheeky one, she died during 
the night.’

‘So what do want me to do about it? Take her down to the farm, and leave us 
alone. You know that we are busy.’

‘Perdóname, señora. I will not bother you again.’

Silvestre went around to the back of the house. Even this early in the morning 
there were two miners waiting at the door of Bryoni’s room. The door was open 
and the men were smoking and watching with interest what was happening inside. 
Silvestre shoved them away from the door, and pointed down the veranda.

‘Go to one of the other girls,’ he told them. ‘This one is finished for 
the day.’

‘I want this one,’ one of the miners started to argue. ‘I know her well. 
She is lively. She fights. She does not just lie there like a dead catfish…’

Silvestre turned on him with a scowl. The man backed down hurriedly. 
Silvestre’s reputation as a knifeman was almost as ugly as his face.

Silvestre kicked the naked buttocks of the miner who was on top of Bryoni. He 
jumped to his feet, hoisted the trousers of his overalls and scurried from the 
room. Silvestre went to kneel beside Bryoni.

‘Are you ready for a little of the good stuff?’ he asked her and took the 
box containing his heroin kit from his pocket. Bryoni sat up eagerly and 
offered him her left arm. He examined it briefly. The crook of her elbow was 
inflamed and ulcerated. One of the big veins had collapsed and the ulcers were 
festering and oozing pus. Her other arm was in a similar condition.

‘I will use your foot,’ he decided. He put the rubber tube around her leg 
just above the ankle and twisted it until the veins puffed up. He shot the drug 
into her leg. Bryoni closed her eyes in anticipation. Then she opened them 
again and smiled at Silvestre. She had lost two of her front teeth a few weeks 
previously in an argument with Silvestre, but that no longer mattered. All that 
mattered was the glorious surge of the heroin through her body.

‘Thank you, Silvestre,’ she whispered dreamily.

‘I am taking you out for a while,’ he told her.

‘Okay,’ she agreed. She had given up caring what happened to her next.

‘I am going to cover you with a blanket, so people won’t see you without 
your clothes.’

‘Thank you,’ she murmured again.

He wound the mud-and-semen-stained blanket around her naked body, and draped a 
fold of it over her head to cover her face. He picked her up in his arms and 
carried her out through the back door of the building and headed into the 
trees. When he came out into the hog farm he saw that Amaranthus was there 
before them. Amaranthus had climbed onto the wall of Hannibal’s sty and he 
had set his camera on its tripod. The animals were milling around below him, 
grunting and squealing. They had seen Silvestre coming down the hill, carrying 
a familiar burden.

‘Are you ready?’ Silvestre called to him. ‘We mustn’t waste too much 
time.’

‘Camera is already rolling!’ Amaranthus laughed with excitement. Beneath 
where he stood Hannibal reared up on his back legs and placed his front hooves 
on top of the wall of the sty. He peered over it as Silvestre approached.

‘How do you want to do this?’ Silvestre asked as he placed Bryoni on her 
feet. He removed the blanket that covered her. With a puzzled expression on her 
face Bryoni stared at Hannibal’s massive black head that was looking at her 
over the wall of the sty. She cowered back against Silvestre’s chest. 
Hannibal was snuffling through his flat pink-blotched snout and champing his 
jaws.

‘I am ready if you are,’ Amaranthus assured him.

‘I think we need a little blood to get Hannibal worked up,’ Silvestre said. 
He stepped back from Bryoni. She was so fascinated by the huge animal in front 
of her that she did not notice what Silvestre was doing. Earlier that morning 
he had left a flat-bladed spade propped against the wall of the sty. He picked 
it up in one hand and said softly, ‘Hey, Bryoni, look at me.’

She turned to face him and he swung the spade at the level of her knees. The 
steel cut through to the bone and shattered her kneecap. Blood spurted from the 
wound. Her leg collapsed under her and Bryoni shrieked with pain and shock as 
she started to fall.

Silvestre dropped the spade and caught her up in his arms. He glanced over her 
head at Amaranthus on the wall above them.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Do it!’ Amaranthus shouted.

With a heave of his shoulders Silvestre tossed Bryoni over the wall. She fell 
amongst the hogs on the far side.

Bryoni was stunned by the fall, but she recovered swiftly. She pushed herself 
up on her elbows and started to drag her body through the black filth of the 
sty, back towards the illusory safety of the wall.

Hannibal led the charge of great black bodies that descended upon her. He 
locked his tusks into her wounded leg. He worried the mutilated limb, trying to 
tear off a mouthful of flesh, dragging Bryoni on her back through the mud. 
Bryoni lifted her face towards the camera.

‘Please!’ she cried. ‘Please somebody help me.’

Then another animal bit into her shoulder and heaved back, until he and 
Hannibal had Bryoni’s body racked between them. A third boar surged forward 
and bit into her stomach and then pulled back, tearing out a tangled mass of 
her entrails.

Bryoni opened her mouth for the last time.

‘Daddy!’ she cried out in a piercing but slowly descending pitch. And the 
pigs tore bloody chunks from her body and gulped them down.

*

Carl Bannock and Johnny Congo sat side by side in Johnny’s prison cell and 
watched the video on the TV screen. This was the third night that they had 
watched it, but both of them were just as excited and animated by it as they 
had been the first time.

From hundreds of hours of tape Amaranthus had, with professional expertise, 
edited out forty minutes. The final result was both sickening and harrowing to 
any but the most sadistic and warped mind. Carl and Johnny rejoiced in it. They 
bellowed with laughter at the highlights as though they were moments of sheer 
comic genius.

‘Run it back!’ Johnny pleaded. ‘That’s so funny. I love it when they 
drown the old mother bitch. I love the way the water and shit shoots out of her 
nose when they pull her head out.’

‘Yeah, that’s good. But I like it even better when Bryoni kneels in front 
of the head honcho and begs for her mother’s life, and then he kicks her in 
the mouth and she sits there spitting out blood and broken teeth. That’s 
really cool, man.’

However, both of them were agreed that the final scene was by far the best part 
of the show. They leaned forward in anticipation of the moment when Bryoni, 
broken and disembowelled, lifted her head out of the mud and called out to her 
father. In chorus they mimicked her, imitating her falling and sobbing 
inflection: ‘Daddy!’

Then both of them burst into delighted laughter as Bryoni’s eyes swivelled up 
towards the sky in agony and the pigs swarmed over her.

‘That scene just freaks me out.’ Carl almost choked on his own laughter. 
‘This Amaranthus guy you found for us should get an Oscar for this.’

‘Yeah, man, he is a genius. When I watch that Daddy bit, it gives me a full 
hard-on every time,’ Johnny confessed.

‘That doesn’t mean too much. Anything at all can give you a bone, 
Blackbird, even a passing bus,’ Carl teased him.

‘Passing bus will do it,’ Johnny agreed. ‘As long as it’s full of 
schoolgirls. But don’t you want to take a look at what I got down there this 
time?’

‘Okay,’ Carl said with aroused interest. ‘Show it to me.’ Then as 
Johnny leaned back in the chair and exposed himself fully, Carl laughed out 
loud.

‘You could sink a Russian battleship with that big black torpedo.’

‘What you going to do about it, white boy?’

‘You know damn well what I’m going to do, Blackbird,’ said Carl, and 
knelt in front of him.

Later, when they had both recovered their breath, Johnny asked, ‘So tell me, 
when you going to send the video to your daddy?’ He used the same inflection 
on the last word as the dying girl had done in the video, and they laughed 
again together.

Then Carl said seriously, ‘Soon as we can work out a way that Henry Bannock 
won’t be able to trace it back to us.’

‘Your daddy didn’t get rich by being stupid,’ Johnny pointed out. ‘As 
soon as he gets it he’s going to know where the tape came from.’

‘Yeah, man, that’s what I want. This is his punishment for what he did to 
me. I want him to know that, but he will never be able to pin it on me.’

*

Ronnie Bunter and his wife Jennie were opera fanatics. They seldom missed a 
premiere at the Grand Houston 1894 Opera House. La Bohème was one of their 
absolute favourites and the travelling La Scala production was visiting Texas. 
The two of them were there on the opening night. After the performance they 
walked back to the underground car park discussing the show with animation. 
Ronnie opened the passenger door of his Porsche 911 and helped his wife into 
her seat, and then he went around to the driver’s side. As he slid into his 
own seat he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Now what on earth have you left here, 
darling?’

‘I haven’t left a single thing, Ronald.’

Ronnie groped around the back of his seat and pulled out a small oblong 
cardboard box. ‘Then how did this get here?’

‘Careful! It could be a bomb, Ronald,’ Jennie said with alarm.

‘If it was we would both be dead by now.’ He examined the package, and then 
read the handwritten label on the front of the box. To Mr Ronald Bunter. To be 
viewed in private. ‘It seems to be a video tape.’

‘Not something nasty, I hope,’ Jennie said primly.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Then why does it say “in private”?’

‘I’ll take it with me to the office tomorrow and have a look at it on the 
projector in the conference room.’

‘Better not let your new assistant watch it. She seems to be a nice girl.’

‘Don’t worry about Jo Stanley. She has just finished three years in law 
school. You can bet your bottom dollar she could teach two old fogeys like us a 
thing or two.’

*

As soon as he had viewed the video the next morning Ronnie phoned the Bannock 
Oil Corporation offices in Anchorage, Alaska. When Henry Bannock came on the 
line he asked, ‘Henry, when will you be back in Houston?’

‘I’m flying back Friday.’ Henry detected the gravity in his old 
friend’s voice. ‘What is it, Ronnie? Is something up? Have you received any 
news from the police about my daughters yet?’

‘Listen, Henry, you must get back here right away. No, I can’t tell you why 
until you get here. Just come, Henry. Come to my office just as soon as you 
can. Do not bring Hazel with you, do you understand? Come alone.’

‘Hold on, Ronnie.’ Ronald heard him speak to somebody with him and then he 
came back on the line, ‘Okay. We will be airborne in an hour. But the flying 
time is more than seven hours. We will get in to Houston pretty late.’

‘No matter how late you get in, come straight to my office, Henry. I will be 
waiting for you. Someone will be downstairs to let you into the building.’

‘I’ll phone you soon as we land,’ Henry assured him.

Bonzo Barnes in his chauffeur uniform was waiting at the VIP fast-track gate of 
Houston airport when Henry Bannock and Hazel came through.

‘Welcome home, sir and madam. We missed you.’

‘How you been, Bonzo?’

Henry shook his hand. Mr Bannock was a real gentleman. He treated even his 
employees with respect; but his grip was no longer firm. Bonzo turned to Hazel 
and during their brief handshake he asked a silent question; cocking his great 
black head slightly on one side and lifting an eyebrow. He was fearful of 
mentioning the missing girls in front of their father.

Sacha and Bryoni had been gone for almost a year. They had left only sorrow and 
despair behind them. Perhaps the worst part of their loss was the uncertainty; 
month after month of agonizing suspense.

Henry Bannock was suffering far worse than any of them. His powerful and rugged 
features seemed to be crumbling. His eyes no longer sought new horizons to 
conquer; they had become dull and introspective. His shoulders were slumped and 
his back bowed. He walked like an old man, shuffling along and clinging to 
Hazel’s arm for comfort and support. But now he rallied and gave Bonzo a 
weary smile.

‘Subtlety has never been one of your many outstanding gifts, Bonzo Barnes. 
The answer is no. We have heard nothing about the girls.’

Bonzo winced. He had worked for Mr Bannock for nigh on thirty years. He should 
have remembered that he had eyes in the back of his head.

‘Sorry, Mr Bannock, sir.’

Henry clapped his shoulder with some of his old vigour. ‘We must all bear up, 
man. Now you can drop me off at Mr Bunter’s office. After that you can take 
Mrs Bannock home. Then come back to town and wait for me. I don’t know how 
long I am going to be.’

On the back seat of the Cadillac Hazel sat close to Henry and hugged his arm. 
‘If you have changed your mind, Henry, I’ll come with you to hear what 
Ronnie has to tell us.’

‘Cayla hasn’t seen her mama for four days. You go on home.’

‘In my life you come first, Henry Bannock; Cayla comes second.’

Henry turned in his seat and looked into her eyes. ‘You’re a good woman. 
The best I ever knew. I’m going to miss you.’

‘Why did you say that?’ She looked at him with alarm.

‘I don’t know why. It just came out.’

‘You aren’t planning to do something stupid, are you?’

‘No, I promise you.’

‘You think Ronnie has bad news, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I know Ronnie Bunter has bad news for me.’

*

Hazel walked with him from the car to the front door of the tall building that 
housed the law firm of Bunter and Theobald, Inc.

Beyond the double glass doors Jo Stanley, Ronnie’s new legal assistant, was 
sitting on one of the white leather sofas in the spacious lobby, reading a 
glossy woman’s magazine. She looked up and saw them crossing the sidewalk. 
She dropped the magazine and came to meet them. As she stooped to unlock the 
door Hazel turned and hugged Henry.

‘Take note of what I tell you, husband!’ she said softly. ‘I shall never 
miss you, because I will always be walking close beside you.’ She reached up 
on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth and then she turned away and hurried back 
to where Bonzo held open the back door of the Cadillac for her.

Henry watched them drive away and then he went into the lobby through the door 
that Jo Stanley held open for him.

‘Sorry to keep you at work so late, Jo.’

‘It’s no trouble, sir. I don’t have much reason to hurry home.’

‘Is Ronnie still here?’

‘He’s waiting for you on the tenth floor in the main conference room. 
I’ll show you up, Mr Bannock.’

‘I know the way better than you do, Jo Stanley. I have been coming here from 
before you were born. Off you go home like a good girl.’ He smiled at her but 
she saw the smile was forced and his eyes were tired.

When the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor Henry found Ronnie waiting 
for him on the landing. ‘Sorry to put you through all this palaver—’ he 
started, but Henry cut him short.

‘Cut the bullshit, Ronnie. Give it to me straight, have they found Bryoni?’

‘It’s not quite as simple as that, Henry.’ He took Henry’s arm.

Henry shrugged his hand away. ‘Come on, Ronnie. I can still walk.’ He 
straightened his shoulders, stood to his full height and marched to the 
conference room. He took his usual seat at the long table and glowered at 
Ronnie. ‘I am listening,’ he said.

Ronnie sat across the table from him. ‘I received a video cassette,’ he 
said.

‘From whom?’

‘I don’t know. While Jennie and I were at the opera Saturday evening 
somebody left it on the driver’s seat of my Porsche.’

‘Have you played it?’ Ronnie nodded. ‘What’s in it?’

‘I cannot describe it. It’s the most harrowing and disgusting filth 
imaginable. Only a very sick and vicious mind could have conceived of this. 
That is why I asked you not to bring Hazel with you.’

‘Does it involve my girls?’

‘Yes. But now I have warned you, do you still want me to screen it for you?’

‘If it affects my girls, do I have any other choice? Run the thing, Ronnie. 
Cut the crap and have done.’

Ronnie reached for the control panel on the desk in front of him and the lights 
dimmed as the silver screen unrolled from the ceiling to cover the far wall. 
Henry swivelled his chair to face it.

‘Steel yourself, Henry, my old friend.’ Ronnie’s tone was compassionate 
as he pressed the ‘Play’ button on the console panel.

The lilting strains of violins playing a Strauss waltz filled the room as the 
screen lit with the image of a tall athletic man playing with a pretty little 
girl on the wide lawn of a magnificent mansion. In the background a lovely 
young woman was watching them fondly.

Henry straightened up in the chair. ‘What the hell! That’s a cut from one 
of my own home movies. That’s me and Marlene with Sacha when she was a kid.’

The scene faded and then was replaced by a magnificent vista of a high summer 
sky and billowing cumulus nimbus clouds. Over this a line of prose appeared in 
golden script:

The extremity of joy is separated by merely the trembling of a leaf from the 
depths of despair …

The vista of sky jump-cut to a night scene of a swimming bath surrounded by the 
shadowy shapes of palm trees. Three masked men held Marlene in the water. The 
underwater lighting showed everything in stark and remorseless detail. Marlene 
was naked, and as Henry watched they drowned her, drawing out the process with 
exquisite sadism.

Then the camera cut away to Bryoni, naked on the edge of the pool, pleading and 
weeping for her mother’s life. She was at the feet of another black-clad 
assailant. Sacha was curled up on the coping beside her. She was hitting her 
head on the marble slabs with such force that her blood flowed.

‘In the holy name of Jesus Christ, don’t let this be happening,’ Henry 
whispered, and his voice was hoarse with agony.

Then he went silent and still as a statue cast in bronze as the horrors 
multiplied. He was unable to tear his eyes from the screen as rapes followed 
beatings, as his girls were forcibly injected with narcotics and then were held 
down by lewd sub-human creatures, and mounted by others even more obscene.

The recorded sounds: the thud of the lash impacting on flesh, the lascivious 
clamour of the tormentors and the agonized whimpering and sobbing of the 
tormented girls were almost as terrible as the images.

At the very end when his beloved Bryoni was down in the mud and filth of the 
sty, being ripped into bloody tatters by the slavering pack of pigs, Henry 
heaved himself painfully to his feet and stood swaying at the head of the long 
table.

On the screen Bryoni lifted her head and seemed to look directly at him.

‘Daddy!’ she cried.

Henry lifted his right hand in a gesture of supplication, as if he were begging 
her forgiveness for failing her in her hour of direst need.

‘Bryoni!’ Henry answered her with his own cry; one ringing with the utmost 
spiritual anguish.

Then he began to fall like a giant Sequoia redwood, slowly at first but swiftly 
gathering momentum, until he crashed face-down onto the long table and lay 
deathly still.

*

The time was already past midnight, but Hazel had asked Cookie to keep dinner 
for Henry. It was a warm evening and the sky was full of stars. She waited on 
the terrace for her husband.

She had chosen a sleeveless blue evening dress, a shade that matched her eyes. 
It left her back bare, and showed off her bosom and the fine musculature of her 
arms. She knew it would please Henry. She had been very strict with herself 
since the birth of Cayla and she was as lean and beautiful as she had been when 
she first met him.

She could not remain still. Impatiently she paced the terrace with panther-like 
grace, sipping the single glass of Pouilly-Fuissé that she allowed herself 
each evening, and humming softly in tune to the music from the concealed 
speakers. She thought about phoning Henry to make certain he was all right, but 
then she shook her head. Henry did not welcome interruption when he was in a 
business meeting.

She paused beside the dinner table and realigned the silver cutlery laid at 
Henry’s place. The wine was in the crystal decanter. She had opened and 
poured one of Henry’s favourite Burgundies to let it breathe and unfold. She 
decided to light the candles as soon as she heard the Cadillac coming up the 
hill, and she checked that the vintage Ronson lighter for that purpose was 
ready to hand.

‘I know that something has happened to the girls. No matter what Ronnie has 
told Henry tonight I am going to be strong,’ she promised herself. ‘I am 
not going to break down and weep. I am going to be strong for him.’

She resumed her restless pacing. Suddenly the phone that she had placed beside 
her own seat rang and she ran back to the table and snatched it up with a great 
surge of relief.

‘Henry!’ she said. ‘Darling! Where are you?’ And her voice sang 
joyously.

‘No, Hazel, it’s me. Ronnie.’

‘Oh God!’ The music went out of her voice. ‘Is Henry all right? Where is 
he?’

‘There is only one way to tell you this, Hazel. With any other woman I would 
try to soften it, but you are different. You are as strong as any man I know.’

Hazel could hear her own heart beating in her ears. She did not speak for five 
slow heartbeats, and then she said quietly, ‘He had a premonition. He’s 
dead, isn’t he, Ronnie?’

‘I am so dreadfully sorry, my dear.’

‘How?’

‘A stroke. A massive stroke. It was almost instantaneous. He felt nothing.’

‘Where is he?’ She felt the cold, a searing arctic cold that struck down 
into the inner regions of her soul.

‘Hospital,’ he said. ‘St Luke’s Episcopal.’

‘Send Bonzo to fetch me, please, Ronnie.’

‘He’s on his way already,’ Ronnie assured her.

*

Hazel stood beside the high hospital bed and looked down on the human shape 
under the white sheet. The cold was still in her heart and in her bones.

Ronnie stood beside her. He took her hand.

‘Thank you, Ronnie. I mean no offence, but I have to do this on my own.’ 
Carefully she withdrew her hand from his.

‘I understand, Hazel.’ Ronnie took a pace backwards and then looked across 
the bed to the nurse who was standing ready. ‘Thank you, Sister.’ The nurse 
took the top edge of the sheet and drew it down gently.

In death Henry Bannock had recaptured the imperial mantle which grief had 
stripped from him.

‘He was a beautiful man,’ Ronnie said softly. ‘He was the finest man I 
ever knew.’

‘He still is,’ Hazel said. She leaned forward and kissed Henry. His lips 
were as cold as her heart.

‘Au revoir, Henry,’ she whispered. ‘God speed, my love. You should have 
died hereafter. Cayla and I are bereft. You have left us only dust and 
darkness.’

‘No, Hazel,’ Ronnie contradicted her softly. ‘Henry has left you an 
empire and the shining beacon of his example to light the way ahead for both 
you and Cayla.’

*

‘A stroke!’ said Carl Peter Bannock joyfully. ‘A massive stroke. The only 
thing bad about it is that they say he never suffered. His doctors are on TV 
saying that it was so quick that there would have been almost no pain. I would 
have enjoyed it even more if they told me that he went out screaming and 
blubbering in agony.’

Johnny grinned. ‘I never knew him but I hate the old shit as much as you do. 
They should feed him to the pigs the way you did to his brats.’

‘Unfortunately, my father built himself a big marble temple on top of a hill 
where he will lie for ever like Napoleon, stuffed and embalmed.’

‘That’s great, white boy. As soon as they turn you loose you should go up 
there and piss on him.’

Carl whooped with mirth. ‘Great idea! While I am about it I might go all the 
way and curl out a turd on his head.’

‘Did you know that this would happen when you sent him the video? Did you 
know that it would kill the old bastard?’ Johnny Congo asked.

‘Of course I did!’ Carl gloated. ‘Didn’t you know, man? I have some 
weird powers. My father kept the ashes of all the filthy Jews he burned in the 
gas ovens in Bergen-Belsen, and on the day I was born he rubbed a pinch of 
those ashes on my head.’

Johnny stopped grinning and looked uneasy. ‘Don’t talk that sort of crap to 
me, man. It gives me the shits.’

‘I am telling you, Johnny. Voodoo stuff, man! The evil eye! I got the evil 
eye.’ Carl opened his eyes wide and stared at Johnny Congo. ‘I can change 
you into a toad. Do you want to change into a toad, Johnny? Just look into my 
eyes.’ Carl’s face contorted into a horrible rictus and he rolled his eyes.

‘Cut that out, man, I’m warning you. Stop fooling around with that sort of 
stuff.’ Johnny jumped off his bunk and went to the barred window. He 
deliberately turned his back on Johnny and stared out at the tiny wedge of sky 
that passed for a view in Holloway. ‘I’m warning you! Don’t make me 
mad.’

‘Your mother made you mad, Johnny. She made you mad when she dropped you on 
your head when you were a baby.’ Johnny spun around from the window and 
glared at him.

‘You leave my mother out of this, white boy.’ Carl knew that this time it 
was not an endearment. Carl also knew just how far he could press his luck with 
him, and he knew that he had reached the absolute limit.

‘Come on, Johnny.’ Carl held up both hands in surrender. ‘I’m your 
friend, remember? You told me I give you the best blow jobs you ever had. I 
don’t have any voodoo powers. I love you, man. I was just kidding around, 
man.’

‘Well, don’t kid around about my mother.’ Johnny had lost the main theme 
of the discussion. ‘She was a saint, man. I’m telling you.’ He was only 
marginally mollified.

‘And I believe you, Johnny. You showed me her picture, remember? She looked 
pretty damn saintly to me.’ He changed the subject quickly. ‘Just think of 
this. You and me, we set out to get those three bitch relatives of mine and we 
got more than that. We got the main man as well. I brought down my own daddy. 
How cool is that?’

‘That’s cool. That’s cool as a pound of shit in a deep freeze.’ Johnny 
turned back from the window. He was smiling again.

‘We got more than half of them with one punch. There are only two left now; 
my old man’s bride and her bastard brat. Only two more to go down and the 
money is all mine.’

‘How much is it, Carl baby?’ Johnny had forgotten and forgiven the affront 
to his sainted mother’s memory. ‘Tell me how much money you going to get, 
man.’

‘One day soon I am going to get me fifty billion green frogskins out of that 
old trust, Johnny baby.’

Johnny rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Man, that’s so much money I still 
can’t get my head around it. Tell me how much it is in a way that I can 
understand it. Tell me the stuff about the motor cars.’

Carl thought for a moment. ‘Well, let me put it this way, Johnny. I will have 
enough money to buy every single motor car in the whole of the US of A.’

Johnny rolled his eyes as though he was hearing it for the first time. 
‘Awesome, man, Carl baby. That’s just plain awesome!’ Johnny Congo 
waggled his head and giggled like a teenage girl. It always took Carl by 
surprise when he did that.

‘And I tell you something else. If one of my good friends is standing beside 
me when that all goes down he is going to get himself one – or ten – 
truckloads of those green goodies.’

‘I’ll be right there beside you, Carl baby, all the way.’ Then Johnny’s 
face puckered up into a bulldog frown. ‘That is unless the man don’t give 
me the hot needle first.’

The buoyant mood between them changed swiftly. Earlier that week Johnny 
Congo’s lawyer had informed him that his appeal against the death sentence 
had finally reached the Supreme Court, and that in all probability the 
judgement would be handed down within the next eighteen months. Up to this 
stage the appeal seemed to have become totally bogged down in the legal system. 
As the years passed Johnny Congo had settled into a state of complacency. He 
had come to believe that his comfortable existence within the walls of the 
Holloway Correctional Unit would continue for the tenure of his natural life.

But now abruptly the spectral figure of the executioner with his dreaded needle 
had reappeared on Johnny’s horizon and was closing in on him, slowly but 
inexorably.

He had long ago been found guilty in the High Court of Texas of multiple 
murders with aggravating circumstances. To date the exact number of his capital 
convictions was twelve. The state prosecutor had decided that this was 
sufficient to his purpose. However, in the event that this was not the case and 
that Johnny somehow managed to wriggle off his hook, he had dockets for a 
further twenty-eight cases of murder that he could bring against Johnny at any 
time in the future.

Texas law recognized nine capital felonies. As he had boasted to Carl Bannock 
on more than one occasion, Johnny had qualified for five out of the nine. They 
had convicted him of straight murder; for sexually aggravated murder because 
sometimes Johnny liked to spice up the job; and of murder for remuneration 
which had been Johnny’s main profession after he had completed his two tours 
of duty with the US Marine Corps. They had also got him for multiple killings, 
which were inevitable in his line of business, and murder in the course of a 
prison escape. In his case the jail break had not been a success.

As Johnny very reasonably complained to Carl, ‘How they expect anyone to 
break out of here without blowin’ somebody away? It’s just downright 
illogical, man.’

All these birds of his were coming home to roost, and Johnny’s birds were all 
vultures. He was a worried man.

‘Calm down, Blackbird. Don’t worry,’ Carl counselled him.

‘Soon as anybody tells me “Don’t worry”, that’s when I really start 
worrying myself to death, man.’

‘We have gotten Marco and half the guards eating out of our hands. When the 
time comes to spring you they will lay down the red carpet for you to waltz out 
through the gates without getting your shoes dirty.’

‘When is that going to happen, man?’ Johnny insisted.

‘They are not going to hit you with the needle for another two years, like 
your lawyer says. So we have got that long at least,’ Carl explained. ‘In 
ten months’ time my own jail time ends, and I am out of here. We already have 
everything set up. As soon as I am released I will get everything else set up 
on the outside. We will make it all infallible.’

‘So then we will go into business with each other on the outside, just like 
we done in here.’

‘You can bet your sweet ass.’

‘I don’t know, Carl.’ Johnny looked dubious. ‘I have been thinking 
about this. When I get out I’ll be a marked man. With twelve murder raps on 
my score card the man will put a million dollars on my head, and they will have 
wanted posters stuck up on every wall in Texas and across the whole US of A. 
With a face like mine people are going to recognize me pretty damn easily. 
I’ll have every bounty hunter in the northern hemisphere after me.’ 
Gloomily Johnny reeled off the list of his woes. ‘Where am I going to 
hide?’ They were both silenced by the question.

‘Where’re you from, Johnny?’ Carl demanded suddenly, and Johnny stared at 
him blankly.

‘That’s a stupid question. I told you I’m from Nacogdoches, the toughest 
town in the entire Lone Star State, didn’t I?’

‘I mean where were you born? You don’t speak like you were born in Texas.’

‘I was born in Africa, man.’

‘Whereabouts in Africa?’

‘What you think my name is, white boy?’ Johnny cheered up and grinned.

‘Johnny.’

‘Johnny who?’

‘Johnny Congo.’

‘Right on, man! Johnny Congo. That’s me. My grandpappy owned half the 
entire country. He were the paranormal chief of the whole damn place.’

‘Do you mean the paramount chief?’

‘Whatever, man. He was the king. He had five hundred wives, man. That’s as 
much a king as anybody can get!’

‘Do you speak the language?’ Carl asked.

‘My mammy taught me well. There are two languages. Inhutu is the language of 
where I come from. And Swahili is the lingo of all of East Africa. I speak them 
both.’

‘Why did your father decide to leave Africa, Johnny?’

‘When my grandpappy died my father was his son number twenty-six. He got 
himself the hell out of there before his big brother, who was son number one, 
could put him in a pot and cook him for dinner. Where I come from we don’t 
piss around. We are real mean bastards, I tell you, man. The Congo is a big 
country. It has been split up into three or four separate countries.’

‘Which one do you come from, Johnny? Where were you born, man?’

‘My country is called Kazundu.’

‘How do you spell that?’

‘Shit, I don’t know. I was only born there, white boy. I didn’t discover 
the place.’

Suddenly there was a rattle of keys on the steel bars of the cell, and Carl 
stood up.

‘It’s time for me to go,’ he said with resignation. With the influence 
that the two of them wielded in the institution, they had been able to meet 
every night from midnight to three a.m. Every visit cost them a few thousand 
dollars in bribes. Neither of them grudged the money. Over the long period of 
their association Johnny had become a multimillionaire, carried to those 
heights on the back of Carl’s financial smarts.

Apart from Carl, Johnny had been deprived of many other forms of convivial, 
intimate and sympathetic human contact. The cells on death row were arranged so 
that the inmates were unable to see each other. Their only contact was verbal, 
shouting to each other down the echoing gallery.

Johnny Congo had been a certifiably crazy psychopath even before he was jailed. 
Without the benefit of Carl’s company over the past nine years he would most 
likely have become a suicide or a raving lunatic.

On the other hand, Carl’s prison routine as a trusty was relatively easy. He 
was allowed four hours a day in the exercise yard where his contact with other 
sub-humans was, if anything, overly unrestricted.

He was allowed visitors twice a week, though nobody from the outside came to 
visit him, unless it was his bank manager. Once Carl had numbered his friends 
in their hundreds, but now he had none, other than Johnny Congo. The notoriety 
of his crimes had placed the mark of the Beast on his forehead for all the 
world to see. He had been shunned and abandoned by everybody outside of 
Holloway.

However, Carl had a deep-seated need of human contact, of sycophants to flock 
around him and tell him what a marvellous person he really was. He knew that 
when he left prison he would have to buy his friends, or seek them in the ranks 
of the outcasts from society wherein he now found himself numbered.

Suddenly the idea of Africa was very attractive. His father had taken him on a 
hunting safari to that land when he was sixteen. He had killed over fifty wild 
animals, and had sex with a number of Maasai and Samburu girls. He had enjoyed 
it all immensely.

*

The two guards who picked Carl up from Johnny Congo’s cell led him back 
through the security gates and scanners to his own cell on the ground floor. 
Carl palmed a roll of hundred dollar bills to the senior officer who winked at 
him and then locked him down for the rest of the night.

Even at this late hour Carl could not sleep. Restlessly he roamed around his 
cell. He was excited and his imagination was sparking. He did not know why he 
had fired the question at Johnny Congo regarding his place of birth. The idea 
had sprung into his mind as though it had always been there, lying concealed 
until the right moment. He accepted it unquestioningly as further proof of his 
own natural genius.

He and Johnny needed a refuge, a fortress in which they would be safe from the 
enemies that surrounded them. For both of them America was now an exceedingly 
hostile place. They needed to find another more congenial country as a haven 
from which they could operate.

Carl stopped in front of his desk, which was concealed behind a curtain in the 
back corner of his cell. He sat down and switched on his computer. As soon as 
the screen came alive he typed in the name ‘Kazundu’ and he hit the Google 
search key.

Within seconds the page filled with rows of data and the legend at the head of 
the page read, ‘About 32,000,000 results’. Carl’s eyes raced down the 
screen as the facts sprang out at him. The descriptions of the country were 
overwhelmingly inauspicious.

Kazundu was the smallest sovereign country on the African continent. In extent 
it covered about 3,500 square miles; roughly half the size of Wales or the 
American state of New Jersey. Its total population was estimated at a quarter 
of a million. There had never been an official census.

It was also the poorest country on the African continent with a gross domestic 
product per capita of $100 per annum. Carl whistled softly. ‘Each of those 
poor suckers is pulling down less than $10 per month! What would ten million 
dollars buy out there?’ he asked himself in an awed whisper. ‘The answer, 
my dear friends, is it would probably buy the whole damned country.’

Carl went on scanning the information on his screen, and he learned that 
Kazundu was situated on the north-western shore of Lake Tanganyika, like a tiny 
bush-tick clinging to the belly of the great elephantine mass of the Democratic 
Republic of Congo.

Lake Tanganyika is a vast inland sea. It is one of the longest and deepest 
lakes in the world, with a north to south length of over four hundred miles. On 
average it is thirty miles wide. Kazundu had a lake frontage of a mere 
twenty-two miles. Fishing and primitive agriculture were its only sources of 
income and sustenance.

Back in the dark days of the Arab slave traders it had been an important link 
in the chain of trading posts that led down to the shores of the Indian Ocean 
to the east. Slaves captured in the interior of the Congo were held there in 
barracoons before being shipped in Arab dhows across the lake to Ujiji, and 
thence down to the coast.

In AD 1680, at the height of the traffic in human beings, the Sultan of Oman 
constructed a castle on a high promontory of a rocky cliff overlooking the 
lake. The slave-trading harbour nestled in the small inlet below the cliff.

When the Arabs were driven out of the Great African Lake districts by the 
European colonists and the anti-slavery forces of France and Great Britain, the 
paramount chief of the local Inhutu tribe moved with his entire court and harem 
into the abandoned castle of Kazundu. His heirs had been ensconced there ever 
since.

The present ruler of Kazundu was the hereditary King Justin Kikuu Tembo XII. 
The Swahili name translated as Great Elephant. His portrait revealed him to be 
an impressively large man with a sombre expression, a scraggly grey beard and 
an enormous paunch that sagged over his kilt of leopard tails. On his head he 
wore a turban of leopard skin, and he sat on a throne of elephant tusks. He was 
surrounded by his multitudinous wives and his bodyguard of five uniformed 
Askari armed with automatic rifles.

According to the numerous derogatory comments on the internet, he ruled the 
tiny state with a high hand, unencumbered by such modern eccentricities as 
parliaments and elections. He was treated by the rulers of the surrounding 
countries with benign indifference. None of them had ever shown much interest 
in wresting the insalubrious little country out of King Justin’s hands. His 
father had been a close associate of General Idi Amin in Uganda, and he was an 
ardent admirer of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Carl clicked on a collection of pictures and photographs of the kingdom. There 
were many views of the lake shore and the mountainous and densely forested land 
that rose beyond it. The settings were splendid and the panoramas across the 
lake were magnificent, wild and barbaric. White-headed fish eagles circled high 
above the creamy beaches, and lines of pink flamingos undulated low across the 
lustrous lake waters.

There were shots of the airport that had been built by South African Airways to 
attract the tourists who never came. The buildings were now abandoned and 
derelict, but the runway which ran parallel to the lake shore looked as though 
it was still serviceable.

The castle was built in the Indo-Islamic style. Elegant minarets rose above the 
formidable walls. The gateways were curlicue shaped, and the windows were 
covered with fretwork panels. Photographs of the interior depicted spacious and 
lofty public rooms. The walls were covered with glazed ceramic tiles in shades 
of blue ranging from azure to indigo and ultramarine. These were overlaid with 
verses from the Koran in black serpentine Arabic script.

These state rooms contrasted sharply with the dingy cellars and dungeons where 
the slaves had once been chained.

Carl Bannock had difficulty restraining himself and his ambitions until he 
could resume his interrupted discussion with Johnny Congo. As soon as the two 
of them were alone again he picked up their discussion at the point it had been 
interrupted.

‘You remember what we were talking about last time, Johnny my man?’

‘I sure do, Carl baby.’ Johnny grinned. ‘I was telling you how my daddy 
and all the family had to get the hell out of Kazundu before my mother-loving 
uncle ate us.’

‘What was your uncle’s name?’

‘Justin Kikuu Tembo.’

‘So your name isn’t really Congo, is it?’

‘My daddy changed it to Congo when we reached Texas, but before that it was 
also Kikuu Tembo. People here in the US can’t get their stupid tongues around 
my real name, man.’

‘How would you like to change back to King John Kikuu Tembo?’ Johnny 
blinked and then began to chortle.

‘You not kidding me, are you? You are real serious, aren’t you, white 
boy?’

‘You remember how we talked about if you have enough money you can take 
anything and you can do anything, and nobody is going to stop you?’

‘I remember.’

‘Well, Johnny, you and I have got enough money. Just give me a little time 
and Kazundu is going to be ours, Your Majesty.’ And he gave Johnny Congo a 
high five.

*

Three nights before his release from the Holloway unit Carl Bannock came to 
visit Johnny Congo on death row for the last time.

First they had sex. They had been lovers now for twelve years and each of them 
knew exactly what the other liked best. As it was a farewell occasion Carl 
acted the role of the queen and let Johnny have it his way.

Afterwards they shared the flat bottle of Dimple Haig whisky that Carl had 
smuggled into the cell with him. Sitting on the bunk with their heads close 
together, drinking the whisky from plastic tooth mugs and speaking in guarded 
whispers, they discussed Johnny’s escape.

The previous week Johnny’s lawyer had come to visit him. He was the only 
person from the outside who had that right. He told Johnny bluntly that they 
had reached the end of the line after many years of legal manoeuvring.

The Supreme Court had finally considered Johnny’s appeal against the death 
sentence and had turned it down flat. The governor of the State of Texas had 
set Johnny’s execution date for 12 August.

‘That’s much sooner than we were banking on,’ Carl reminded him. ‘It 
leaves us only a couple of months to spring you out of this joint. It was lucky 
that we started working on the planning so much earlier. Now we have only a few 
minor details to work out.’

By the time that the unit controller came to let Carl out of Johnny’s cell 
and escort him back to the trusties’ level on the ground floor, they had 
settled every one of those minor details.

The unit controller was Lucas Heller who had been the first to welcome Carl 
into Holloway twelve years previously. Since then he had been promoted to his 
present elevated rank in the prison hierarchy. When they reached the ground 
level Lucas took Carl into his own office and locked the door while the two of 
them discussed the final details of the plan that Carl had just agreed with 
Johnny Congo. When they had finished, Lucas tactfully brought up the matter of 
payment of the bribes. Lucas referred to these euphemistically as the 
motivational considerations.

Carl had agreed to make the payments in tranches; half the agreed fee 
immediately, and the balance on the day previous to the actual escape.

The prison warden, Marco Merkowski, would receive a total of $250,000 paid into 
a numbered account in the Bank of Shanghai in Singapore. The $100,000 for the 
two level supervisors would be transferred to an account in the British Virgin 
Islands. Lucas Heller was the main mover and shaker. He would be paid $200,000 
in the Cayman Islands and an additional $200,000 once Johnny was outside the 
walls of Holloway and running free. Carl would personally hand over this final 
tranche to Lucas Heller in used $100 bills, and then they would shake hands and 
part as friends, never more to meet.

*

The traditional manner in which a prisoner was released from Holloway was 
firstly to take him down to the induction area and make him hand over his 
prison uniform. Then he would sign for, and be handed, a bag containing the 
same clothing in which he had entered the establishment all those years ago. 
Finally two armed guards escorted him as far as the main gate. There he was 
pushed firmly out into the sweet air of freedom and the gate slammed just as 
firmly behind him. If one of the guards was in a beneficent mood he might point 
the way to the Greyhound Bus terminal, only a three-mile hike down the road.

On Carl Bannock’s release day Warden Marco Merkowski came to his cell to 
shake his hand and bid him Godspeed. Then Lucas Heller escorted him to the 
induction centre, where he handed over his prison-issue uniform and received 
and signed for the large parcels that his tailors in Houston had consigned to 
him. These contained a custom tailored suit in pale grey flannel, a Sun Island 
cotton shirt, gold monogrammed cufflinks; a black string necktie with a lapis 
lazuli pendant; a wide-brimmed cream-coloured Stetson hat and a pair of 
high-heeled Western boots.

Lucas rode with Carl in the prison bus to the main gates, where a black hire 
limo with a uniformed chauffeur that he had ordered online was waiting. The 
limo carried Carl in air-conditioned silence to the Four Seasons Hotel on Lamar 
Street in Houston.

The receptionist escorted him up to his suite. After he had tipped her a $50 
bill, he ordered a bottle of chilled Dom Pérignon from room service. He sipped 
a flute of the champagne as he phoned down to the concierge. His name was Hank 
and he well-remembered Carl and his generosity from the old days.

‘I want a couple of lady friends for the evening, Hank.’

‘Certainly, Mr Bannock,’ Hank agreed. ‘One blonde and one black, as 
usual; is that right, sir?’

‘You have a good memory. Make sure they are as young as possible, just short 
of jail-bait. Tell them I’ll want to see a piece of photo ID to prove their 
age.’

*

The following week was extremely busy as Carl picked up the severed threads of 
his previous existence, re-established old contacts and made new ones from the 
list that Johnny Congo had provided for him.

He spent a morning with his private account manager at the Carson National Bank 
in Houston, rearranging and fine-tuning his accounts and portfolios. Then he 
passed a glacial hour at the law firm of Bunter and Theobald, Inc., with the 
head trustee of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

Ronald Bunter treated him as though he was a species of poisonous reptile and 
answered his questions only as far as a strict interpretation of the Trust Deed 
would allow.

Ronald had his legal assistant at his side. She was a young woman named Jo 
Stanley. She was attractive and seemed extremely efficient, but she was a 
little too old for Carl’s particular tastes. Although he did consider that 
she might be able to obtain for him a more comprehensive and up-to-date 
overview of the affairs of the Trust than Bunter was prepared to divulge.

The following morning Carl phoned Jo Stanley from his suite to invite her to 
dine with him. He had decided to explore the extent of her libido and the 
effect of his irresistible charms upon it. If this proved to be negative then 
she would certainly be amenable to a bribe. Carl had never yet met anybody who 
was not responsive to both of these two stimuli.

However, Jo Stanley declined to accept his call and, to Carl’s mild 
embarrassment, had it transferred directly to Ronald Bunter’s desk.

Carl broke the connection as soon as he recognized Ronnie’s voice.

He decided to postpone his assault on the Family Trust until he had freed 
Johnny Congo. Johnny was running out of time.

One of the names on Johnny’s list of reliable contacts was a certain Aleutian 
Brown.

‘Aleutian is young but he is bright and mean. He is well connected. He has 
never let me down yet. He is just about the best man on the entire west 
coast.’ Johnny had recommended him and provided Carl with his contact number.

In response to his phone call, Aleutian Brown flew in from Los Angeles and Carl 
picked him up from the airport. During the short drive from the airport to the 
hotel where he had made reservations Carl learned enough to accept Johnny 
Congo’s assessment of the man.

Aleutian was one of the top honchos in a black gang known as the Angels or the 
Maaliks. The gang was international. Its tentacles reached out from the USA 
across the oceans to all the major cities world-wide, wherever there was a 
significant Muslim segment of the population. Within a few days Aleutian had 
taken care of all the planning and logistics of the operation, and Carl was 
able to set a final date for Johnny’s rescue. He decided on 29 July, two 
weeks before the date appointed for Johnny’s execution.

On 23 July there was an explosion in the laundry of Holloway prison. Two 
inmates were killed and all the washing and drying machinery was destroyed or 
severely damaged. This was critical to the smooth functioning of the entire 
unit. Emergency measures had to be taken by the prison administration. One of 
the commercial laundries that serviced some of the major hotels in the city was 
located only fifteen miles from the Holloway prison.

Polar White Laundry was chosen from a shortlist, and the selection was endorsed 
by the prison warden, Marco Merkowski, on the suggestion of Johnny Congo and a 
motivational consideration from Carl. Thirty per cent of the employees of Polar 
White were members of the Maalik Angels.

On the early morning of 29 July a five-ton white International truck pulled up 
at the main service gate of Holloway. On each side of the truck body was 
emblazoned the name of the laundry, and images of a smiling female polar bear 
with her three frolicking cubs wearing spotless white napkins. Over the past 
week, since the destruction of the prison laundry, the guards at the main 
prison gates had become accustomed to the daily traffic of these vehicles.

Today there were five men on board. All of them were dressed in white overalls 
with the company’s name and logo embroidered on their backs.

Carl Bannock was the driver of the truck, and Aleutian Brown was his mate. The 
other three riding in the body of the truck were all Maaliks. Carl was a 
cautious person and much concerned by his personal safety. He had evaluated the 
risk factor of being one of the rescue party, and decided it was minimal. 
Nevertheless he was nervous and jumpy as he drove up to the main gates of 
Holloway.

He sweated lightly across his forehead as his forged ID was carefully checked 
by the prison guards on the gate. As last they waved the truck through.

After his long residence in Holloway Carl knew the layout of the unit 
intimately. He drove to the service entrance of the prison’s utility block. 
There he reversed the truck up to the loading bank of the laundry. Once the 
double doors at the rear were opened, the trolleys were trundled out of the 
truck. In the laundry they were loaded with canvas sacks of dirty washing which 
were then pushed back to the waiting Polar White truck.

The three switches and substitutions that ensued were as neat and smooth as a 
magician’s illusions.

In one of the last laundry sacks to be loaded into the truck Johnny Congo was 
concealed. The sack had been marked and was manhandled with great care into the 
cargo body. Aleutian, who was overseeing the loading, made certain that it was 
placed in a position where it was screened by the other laundry bags, but where 
Johnny Congo would not be in any danger of suffocation.

The last trolley that was pushed from the truck into the laundry already had a 
single sack on board. It also contained a human body, but this one was very 
much deceased.

The previous week Aleutian had visited the suburb of Gulfton, one of the 
poorest areas of Houston populated mostly by Hispanics and immigrants. In a 
cheap bar he had picked out somebody with a passing resemblance to Johnny in 
that he was big, black and formidable-looking. Aleutian had bought him a drink 
and offered him a well-paid job. The man had accepted enthusiastically. 
Aleutian had given him $200 as an earnest of good faith, and arranged to meet 
in the same bar on the evening of 28 July.

They had met again as arranged. Johnny had plied him with liquor until he was 
jovial and unsteady on his feet, then he had strangled him in the parking lot 
behind the bar and had packed his body into the laundry sack in the trunk of 
his rental car. This sack was the last to be unloaded from the Polar White 
truck.

The corpse in the sack was taken down to Death Row. It was swiftly placed in 
Johnny Congo’s bunk with its face to the wall and covered with a blanket, 
leaving only the back of its head exposed. To a casual observer it would seem 
that Johnny Congo was still securely tucked up in his bunk.

Lucas Heller climbed into the empty sack and was trolleyed back to the Polar 
White truck, and placed alongside Johnny Congo.

Now that the Polar White truck was fully loaded the rear doors were slammed 
shut. Carl Bannock climbed into the cab and started the engine. Aleutian was 
already in the passenger seat, and Carl drove sedately back through the inner 
checkpoints and finally out onto the Interstate.

Ten miles down the highway they pulled off into a service area and Carl parked 
among the other large vehicles in the truck stop. He and Aleutian opened the 
rear doors. The three laundry employees jumped down and immediately set off to 
where they had left a small Toyota sedan the previous evening. They drove away 
without looking back. None of them ever showed up again at the Polar White 
Laundry.

Carl and Aleutian climbed into the back of the laundry truck and closed the 
doors behind them. They released Johnny Congo and Lucas from their canvas bags.

Johnny and Carl embraced ardently while Aleutian and Lucas Heller looked on 
with amusement. Then Johnny turned to Aleutian and lifted him off his feet in a 
bear hug.

‘Aleutian Brown, you are one hectic dude. I told Carl we could rely on you, 
man.’

Lucas Heller went to Carl and held out his hand. Carl took it and squeezed. 
Lucas squirmed at the pressure.

‘Okay, Carl,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘If you’ll just give me what you 
owe me now I will leave you and your pals to celebrate and I’ll be on my 
way.’

Still holding his hand Carl told him seriously, ‘Thank you, Lucas. It’s 
been a real pleasure knowing you, it really has.’ Then, still holding 
Lucas’s hand firmly, he nodded at Aleutian. ‘Okay, Aleutian. Give him what 
we owe him.’

From the inside pocket of his overalls Aleutian slipped out a small-calibre 
pistol fitted with a silencer. He fired a single bullet into the back of Lucas 
Heller’s skull.

Carl released his hand and Lucas’s body dropped to the floor. His legs kicked 
and his body juddered. Aleutian stooped over the corpse and fired two more 
spaced shots into Lucas’s right temple. His legs stopped kicking.

‘What the hell?’ said Johnny Congo. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

‘I never liked the bastard,’ Carl explained reasonably. ‘And I just saved 
us two hundred grand.’

‘I love you, Carl Bannock.’ Johnny clutched his belly and guffawed.

Aleutian had brought a change of clothing for each of them packed into one of 
the laundry bags. They discarded their uniforms and dressed quickly in street 
clothes. Then they jumped down from the back of the truck. Carl locked all the 
doors and they left the International and walked unhurriedly to the far side of 
the car park where the previous afternoon Aleutian had left a Ford rental car.

They climbed into it and drove north on Route 45 for forty miles and then they 
turned onto a secondary road and headed west towards Waco. In the late 
afternoon they reached a crop-spraying airstrip in the centre of a wide area of 
cultivated sorghum. There was a twin-engine Baron G58 prop-driven aircraft 
waiting for them on the strip. The aircraft was owned by one of Aleutian’s 
drug contacts and its short take-off and landing capabilities were ideal for 
their needs.

The pilot already had the engines ticking over, and the nose lined up with the 
runway. Carl and Aleutian shook hands with Johnny Congo. Then Johnny scrambled 
up on the wing root and stooped to cram his bulk through the open cabin door.

The co-pilot locked the door behind him, and the pilot gunned the engines and 
roared away down the strip, outward bound for La Ceiba in Honduras where Señor 
Alonso Almanza was looking forward to the pleasure of Johnny’s company.

*

Johnny and Carl met again fourteen days later in a suite on the top floor of 
the Hotel La Lasjitas in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. Carl had a Gold 
Rewards Card issued by Four Seasons. He always enjoyed the ambiance and the 
service that the company provided.

After they had sex, they showered together, and then took a cab down to the 
Puerto Madero and ate huge juicy steaks at Cabaña las Lilas. They washed them 
down with a bottle of Catena Alta Malbec. Afterwards they returned to the hotel 
suite.

The concierge had been forewarned and as soon as they arrived he sent two young 
people up to their room.

Carl checked the ID of the two visitors carefully. The girl looked to be about 
twelve years old, but her papers proved that she was sixteen years and two 
months. Carl kissed her and squeezed her skinny little buttocks. ‘You are 
very beautiful, my angel,’ he told her.

The boy was four months older than the girl. He was also very comely, if overly 
effeminate. When Johnny smiled at him from the sofa, he minced across the room 
and sat down on Johnny’s lap.

The following evening Carl and Johnny settled into the first-class cabin of the 
Air Malaysia flight to Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa. From the 
Presidential Suite of the One and Only Hotel at the Cape Town waterfront Carl 
phoned an unlisted number and spoke with General Horatio Mukambera in Harare, 
the capital city of Zimbabwe.

The general informed Carl that President Mugabe had been fully briefed on their 
proposal and had ordered the cooperation of the military. He confirmed that the 
funds had been received in the bank in Singapore, and that he would meet them 
in person when they arrived at Harare airport on board South African Airways.

Carl then passed the call on to Johnny Congo. Johnny had served two full tours 
of duty with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam, so his combat experience was 
extensive. He had reached the rank of sergeant major, and had been in the thick 
of the action on numerous occasions.

Within minutes he had established his credentials, and General Mukambera was 
aware that he was speaking to a man who knew the business. Their conversation 
became more relaxed and cordial as they discussed the logistics of the 
operation.

‘I am able to put at your disposal up to two companies of first-line assault 
paratroopers,’ the general told him.

‘How many men in one of your companies, General?’

‘One hundred and twenty.’

‘We do not want to be under-gunned. We will need both your companies,’ 
Johnny told him. ‘You have a secure location where I will be able to meet the 
men and work with them before we head north?’ Johnny switched into Swahili, 
leaving Carl unable to follow the conversation. But the general warmed to him 
even further as he replied in the same language.

‘Yes, we have an operations area that I can put at your disposal. But tell me 
how you speak one of our languages so well? I thought you were an American.’

‘I was born in East Africa. I am a member of the Inhutu tribe.’

‘Ah, I see! That explains a great deal. Welcome back to your homeland, Mr 
Kikuu Tembo.’

‘Thank you, General Mukambera.’ Johnny reverted to English. ‘I understand 
you have been informed that we also need air transport.’

‘I am able to put at your disposal a Douglas Dakota C-47 Skytrain.’

‘That type is a veteran of World War II,’ Johnny protested.

‘I assure you that it has been meticulously maintained, Mr Kikuu Tembo.’ 
Johnny glanced at Carl for guidance.

‘What is its range, General?’ Carl asked.

‘Its range is fifteen hundred nautical miles, fully loaded, but this machine 
has long-range fuel tanks that give it an additional five-hundred miles. I 
personally have flown from Harare to Nairobi in this same plane on a number of 
occasions.’

‘What is the load capacity?’

‘The Skytrain will carry seventy fully battle-equipped men.’

‘So we will need to make four flights,’ Johnny mused. ‘What do you 
estimate the turnaround time, General?’

‘We can operate from Kariba on our northern border. Turnaround Kariba to 
Kazundu will be under seven hours.’

‘The transport doesn’t have to land at Kazundu. The men will jump. This 
means that on Day One we will be able to put a hundred and forty men on the 
ground. The second wave can come in early on Day Two.’

‘I have had a report on the present strength of Kazundian forces. They will 
not be able to put up much of a fight against those numbers. I think that after 
your first strike the survivors will almost certainly be very happy to change 
sides.’

*

Four days later Carl and Johnny parted company at Harare airport. Johnny was 
picked up by a Zimbabwean army transport truck and driven two hundred miles 
down into the Zambezi valley to a military training camp in the remote bush.

Lieutenant Samuel Ngewenyama was waiting there to greet him and escort him to 
his quarters in one of the camp’s prefabricated huts. There Johnny changed 
into the camouflage fatigues and paratrooper boots that had been laid out on 
his bunk. Then Sam Ngewenyama paraded the men for his inspection.

Johnny Congo was satisfied with the turn-out. He had expected something much 
worse. These were certainly not US Marines, but he judged they were spirited 
fighting men. With a little brushing up they would be good enough for the job 
ahead.

He was especially pleased with Sam Ngewenyama. He was a veteran of the dirty 
little bush war against the Rhodesian forces of Ian Smith. He was a hard man 
with the cold eyes of a man-eater. Sam soon recognized the same qualities in 
Johnny Congo.

Over the following days Sam and his men struggled to keep pace with Johnny’s 
powers of endurance. They were unable to match his skill with knife, pistol and 
rifle, nor his expertise in unarmed combat and bush-craft. It did not take long 
for Sam Ngewenyama to give Johnny his unconditional respect and loyalty.

Johnny drove the men hard and at the end of three weeks he had transformed 
them, almost but not entirely, into marines.

*

In the meantime Carl flew north to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic 
Republic of Congo. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was one of the largest 
countries in Africa, ravaged by decades of internecine warfare in which an 
estimated 5.4 million people perished. It also had the world’s highest 
incidence of HIV.

Congolese governments rose and fell. Corruption was routine. Warfare, mass rape 
and pillage were the way of life. Marauding gangs of thugs without affiliations 
to any recognized authority roamed the back-country.

Back in the mists of time when the Great Rift Valley split the crust of the 
earth it exposed a vast treasury of natural resources. These included 
columbite-tantalite, locally known as coltan. This mineral is the ore of 
tantalum, a metal essential to the manufacture of capacitors, cellular phones, 
pacemakers, GPS, laptop computers, ignition systems, anti-lock braking systems, 
video and digital cameras and the whole array of modern super-gadgetry. Pound 
for pound, tantalum is worth half as much again as pure gold.

Eighty per cent of the world’s known reserves of coltan are found in the 
eastern regions of the Congo, abutting Kazundu.

The other minerals mined in the eastern Congo were diamonds of industrial and 
gem quality, gold, cassiterite and wolframite. These were the notorious 
conflict minerals and blood diamonds, the production of which Europe and the 
West sought to suppress and control. Paradoxically the industrial nations 
themselves had developed an insatiable hunger for them. In the process of 
attempting to embargo them the altruists had driven their market value up to 
astronomical heights.

The tiny kingdom of Kazundu was situated on the border of the remote and 
dangerous eastern areas where the local population, including women and small 
children, was coerced by armed soldiers of rogue factions into labouring 
forty-eight-hour shifts in the mud-slides and collapsing tunnels of the 
primitive mines.

For a man like Carl Peter Bannock this situation could be summed up with one 
sweet and melodious word … Profit.

In Kinshasa Carl met clandestinely with three men who were blood-related to the 
newly declared state president. French is the official language of the Congo, a 
language in which Carl Bannock was fluent, so there was no impediment to their 
negotiations. At first the Congolese gentlemen were cautious and guarded, even 
though Carl had come highly recommended by senior members of the Zimbabwean 
government. However, they slowly warmed to Carl as he laid out for them a 
detailed and convincing plan in which the neighbouring state of Kazundu could 
be transformed from a forgotten appendage without utility or real value into a 
vital export channel through which the conflict mineral could be safely and 
lucratively exported.

Carl emphasized the fact that it would not cost them anything in hard cash. All 
that was required was for the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to 
look the other way while King Justin, that brutal and hated tyrant, was deposed 
in favour of his benevolent and enlightened nephew King John Kikuu Tembo, who 
was the legitimate heir to the throne. Naturally, once the change of monarchs 
had been effected, the Congo would place its tiny neighbour under its 
protection, coming to its defence in the conclaves of the United Nations and 
the African Union if the change in the monarchy were ever placed under scrutiny.

In this manner it could be ensured that the supply of blood minerals across the 
borders would not be hampered by the prudish sensibilities of the American and 
Western European governments.

Finally, it was agreed that the Congo government would pass a diplomatic 
message to King Justin to inform him that Carl Bannock and his associates 
wished to meet with him to discuss a scheme to build a luxury holiday resort 
and spa on the Kazundu lake shore. They would inform him these visitors had 
tens of millions of dollars to invest in the project.

The meetings ended with smiles, handshakes and the utmost bonhomie.

*

Carl and Johnny were reunited in the imperial suite of Meikles Hotel in Harare. 
They reviewed and discussed their progress, and put the final touches on the 
master plan.

The following day Johnny introduced Carl to Lieutenant Sam Ngewenyama. Carl was 
delighted with him. Carl was not much given to acts of derring-do, but he 
recognized and valued the killer instinct in others. He did not need Johnny’s 
endorsement to see that Sam was a hard man. He gave Johnny a nod of approval 
and listened as Johnny gave Sam his orders. He was to go into Kazundu in the 
guise of an itinerant work seeker, and carry out a preliminary reconnaissance.

The only feasible way into Kazundu was by lake steamer. Sam flew on Air Zambia 
from Harare into the port of Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. In 
the airport toilet he changed into distressed and tattered clothing and assumed 
his role of work seeker. From there he boarded the MV Liemba, which had 
originally been commissioned as a German gunboat in World War I.

There were two hundred other passengers on board. All of them camped on the 
open deck. There were no toilets. This in no way discommoded any of them; both 
sexes merely backed up to the ships rail when necessity called.

It took four days and eight ports of call before the MV Liemba sailed into the 
beautiful little port of Kazundu. Sam was one of only six passengers to 
disembark. They were met on the dockside by two armed militiamen who ordered 
the new arrivals to open their luggage. Then they picked over the contents of 
the various bundles and cardboard cartons to select anything that took their 
fancy. One of the passengers was a teenage mother with an infant slung on her 
back. Laughing and joking, one of the militiamen handed his rifle to Sam to 
hold for him and took the girl into the public toilet at the end of the wharf. 
As short while later she returned giggling, with her infant still on her back, 
seemingly more cheerful and sanguine for the brief interlude.

Sam handed back the rifle to the militiaman. However, he had taken the 
opportunity to check the weapon in his absence. It was a VZ-58 copy of the 
Russian AK-47 of 1950s vintage. There was no blueing remaining on the metal of 
the barrel and no ammunition in the magazine. Sam grinned as he considered the 
kind of resistance they might expect when they returned to Kazundu with more 
serious intentions.

Sam left the harbour and walked into the town, stopping to talk to every person 
he met about the chances of finding a job. All of them were dressed in rags. 
They had gaunt faces and either fearful or apathetic expressions. Many of them 
seemed to be in the advanced stages of starvation. Most of them hurried away 
without replying to his questions.

Sam walked across Kazundu’s deserted landing strip on his way to King 
Justin’s castle. He judged that the Dakota Skytrain would have no difficulty 
landing once some of the more bulky rubbish, which had rendered the strip 
unserviceable, was dragged off the runway. There were a handful of militiamen 
and their women camped in the ruins of the terminal building. In contrast to 
the other Kazundians he had met they were well nourished.

He climbed the pathway to the castle on the summit and squatted with the other 
work seekers and beggars in the courtyard while he studied the layout of the 
building. There was only one entrance, facing towards the lake. The gate sagged 
on its hinges. It was clear that it had not been closed for many years.

Despite the magnificent vistas of the lake and the forested hills of the 
interior there was an air of despondency hanging over it all like a poisonous 
miasma.

Finally, one of the inner doors of the castle was flung open and four armed men 
emerged and ordered them to disperse. They reinforced the order with the butts 
of their rifles. One of them struck Sam in the face. When Sam made an 
instinctive move to retaliate he stepped back and pointed the barrel at Sam’s 
face, at the same time pumping a round into the breech of the weapon.

‘Yes!’ he encouraged Sam, grinning. ‘Come!’

Sam checked his anger and returned the man’s gaze for a few seconds, and then 
he touched his bleeding lip and said softly, ‘I will come back, and I will 
remember your face.’ He turned away and the guard jeered at him as he went 
out through the open gate.

Three days later Sam reboarded the MV Liemba and returned to Kigoma on the 
eastern shore of the lake. As the Liemba made fast to the passenger pier, Sam 
noticed there was a large motor launch lying at moorings in the bay. One of the 
assignments that Johnny Congo had given him was to look out for this vessel and 
to gather as much information about it as he could. It had not been in the bay 
when he passed through on his way to Kazundu, but now it had returned.

Dressed once more in his new and stylish clothing, Sam went down to the harbour 
master’s office at the head of the pier and spoke to the clerk he found 
sitting on the veranda. The clerk told him that the launch belonged to the 
government administration of the district of Kigoma. It was used mainly by the 
provincial governor on his official business, however on occasion it was 
chartered out to other parties. The clerk assured Sam that it was a very 
seaworthy vessel and capable of crossing to the far shore of the lake in even 
the heaviest kinds of wind and water conditions.

Johnny Congo had given him one other task to perform. Kigoma was an important 
centre of food distribution for the entire western side of the lake. Sam caught 
the full attention of the local area manager by giving him a fifty-dollar bill 
to cover his ‘personal expenses’, then they discussed the supply of large 
quantities of maize meal, the staple diet of Africa. The manager assured him 
that any amounts of this foodstuff could be placed at his disposal at short 
notice.

Sam caught the late-afternoon flight back to Harare and reported to Johnny 
Congo and Carl. The conversation was in Swahili, which Carl was unable to 
follow. Johnny listened intently and asked a few questions, and then he leaned 
back in his armchair and crossed his arms.

‘Well, Carl baby,’ he said. ‘Everything is arranged. We have received a 
cordial invitation from my Uncle Justin to visit him and bring our ten million 
dollars with us and we have chartered the governor’s launch to get us there. 
So we are off to our new home.’ Carl stroked his chin and looked thoughtful.

‘I think I’ll let you go on ahead,’ he said tentatively. ‘I’ll follow 
you as soon as you call for me.’ Knowing Johnny as he did, Carl had no doubt 
at all that the air would be blue with flying bullets when Johnny Congo arrived 
in Kazundu.

‘I’m calling for you now, baby. I don’t want you to miss any of the 
fun,’ said Johnny expansively and Carl’s shoulders slumped with resignation.

*

On the passenger jetty of Kigoma port Carl made his last attempt to sidle out 
of the path of looming danger. He shaded his eyes and gazed out across the 
lake. The banks of early morning mist had not yet been dispersed by the rising 
sun.

‘It looks very rough out there,’ he said. ‘I think there is a storm 
brewing. I’m not a good sailor. I think it would be best if—’

‘Yeah, man. I agree with you,’ Johnny said. ‘It is fifty clicks to the 
far side. It would be best if we move our hairy asses and get cracking right 
now.’ He picked up Carl’s kit bag and hurled it over the rail of the motor 
launch onto the open deck. Then he grabbed Carl’s arm and marched him across 
the gangplank.

When they had the castle and the port of Kazundu in sight, Johnny made a call 
on his satellite phone. While he waited for the pilot of the incoming Dakota 
Skytrain to respond he searched the southern sky, although he knew it was still 
too soon for him to pick out the aircraft amongst the towering cumulus nimbus 
clouds.

‘This is crunch time, white boy,’ he warned Carl. ‘If there has been a 
fuck-up, if somebody has blown the whistle on us, those bastards there…’ he 
pointed with his chin at the small reception committee on the wharf of Kazundu 
harbour ‘… are going to shoot the shit out of us before we can get one foot 
on the dock.’

Carl said nothing but his handsome face turned a pale shade of green.

At that moment the pilot of the incoming Zimbabwean Dakota answered Johnny’s 
satellite call.

‘This is Chicken Soup,’ he said.

‘This is Mother Hen. What is your status?’ Johnny asked him.

‘Forty-two minutes to drop.’

‘Roger that. Keep coming,’ Johnny told him. ‘Over and out.’

Suddenly the men waiting on the Kazundu wharf began to wave and their shouted 
greetings reached them across the closing gap of lake water. Carl leaned over 
the rail and in relief threw up into the lake, copiously and noisily.

His Majesty had sent his ancient Land Rover down from the castle to fetch them. 
It was the only functioning motor vehicle in the kingdom. When Johnny, Sam and 
Carl were on board, four of the militiamen push-started the Landy and as soon 
as the engine fired they clung onto the sides.

Nearing the top of the hill the Landy began to falter. Clouds of blue smoke 
blew out of her exhaust. The militiamen jumped off and shoved her the last 
fifty yards through the gates of the castle and into the courtyard.

The riff-raff had been cleared out, and the courtyard was deserted. However, as 
soon as the engine of the vehicle, with a final backfire, subsided into silence 
the court chamberlain emerged from the main gates with a small retinue to 
welcome them. He was a plump personage with a pair of pendulous dugs dressed in 
only a kilt of white colobus monkey tails.

He beckoned them from the gateway. The three of them dismounted from the Land 
Rover and climbed the stairs. Johnny and Sam were carrying their leather 
briefcases. Carl hung back behind them. They went in through the gate with the 
chamberlain dancing ahead of them, leading them through a series of state rooms 
that were devoid of any furnishing or decorations. They had to pick their way 
around groups of women squatting at the cooking fires which had been laid on 
the beautifully patterned ceramic floor tiles. The walls and high ceilings were 
blackened by soot from the wood fires. Rubbish and animal droppings littered 
the floor. Naked black toddlers with dried mucus encrusting their noses 
squalled and wailed, tumbling over each other like puppies on the filthy tiles. 
They fell silent and with enormous dark eyes watched the three strangers pass. 
The sleeping dogs woke and rushed forward barking furiously, until Johnny Congo 
kicked the leader of the pack in the guts with such force that it skidded on 
its back across the tiles, howling in shock and agony. The rest of them 
scattered in panic.

The air reeked of unwashed humanity, wood smoke and raw sewage.

As they approached the doorway at the end of the hall the chamberlain began to 
chant in a high falsetto and cavort in a grotesque rheumatic dance.

‘What’s he saying?’ Carl demanded anxiously.

‘He is the praise singer to the king,’ Johnny translated. ‘He is telling 
us how King Justin, the mighty elephant, devours the trees of the forest and 
shits them on the heads of his enemies.’

They entered the throne room. On a raised dais against the far wall King Justin 
sat on his throne of elephant tusks. As his official portrait had depicted him, 
he was a large man clad in leopard-skin kilt and turban. His beard was thick, 
grey and curling. His eyes were bloodshot and he smelled richly of millet beer. 
He held a large clay pot of this home brew balanced on his lap.

At the king’s feet sat two young girls, bare-breasted and nubile. On each 
side of the throne were arrayed his bodyguards. There were six of them. Their 
uniforms ranged from faded denim jeans to goatskin kilts. They were all 
barefooted. One of them was a boy no older than thirteen years of age. The 
Russian automatic rifle that he was leaning on reached as high as his shoulder.

‘Good God!’ said Carl softly. ‘That one is still a baby.’

‘He has probably killed more people than you have swatted flies,’ Johnny 
Congo warned him. Then, still in English, he told Sam Ngewenyama at his side. 
‘Give the old bastard the usual greeting and tell him that his fame is known 
as far away as America. Men whisper his name in fear and deep respect.’

Sam repeated the greeting in Swahili and King Justin nodded and his sombre 
expression lightened perceptibly as he spoke to his chamberlain in Inhutu.

‘Say that I am pleased to welcome these people to Kazundu. I am told that he 
is a rich man who has many thousands of cows. These two girls…’ he prodded 
them with his bare toes ‘… are his wives for as long as he stays here as my 
guest.’

The chamberlain genuflected deeply to the king and then turned to the visitors 
and repeated it all in Swahili. Sam Ngewenyama then translated it into English.

Carl smiled at Johnny. ‘The chick on the left has a raging dose of syphilis, 
and the one on the right is riddled with AIDS. Take your pick, my old 
darling.’

The tedious and meaningless conversation with His Majesty continued at length 
while Johnny glanced at his watch from time to time.

‘The Dakota is four minutes overdue,’ he grumbled softly to Carl. ‘I hope 
the pilot hasn’t lost his way.’ Then suddenly he brightened. ‘Here he 
comes!’

Carl cocked his head, and caught the soft throbbing of a multiple-engined 
aircraft. It was still merely a tremble of sound in the air, but it increased 
rapidly in volume. Johnny left the group gathered in front of the throne and 
with a few long strides reached the open doors which led onto the ramparts and 
battlements of the castle. He stepped out into the open and looked up at the 
southern sky.

The big lumbering aircraft was banking steeply onto its drop run down the 
length of the derelict runway of the airstrip. It was at an altitude of only 
five or six hundred feet when the first human shape dropped out of the hatch 
and fell free for a few seconds before his parachute flared and his swift 
descent was checked abruptly. He was followed at close intervals by the other 
men in his stick jumping out of the doors on each side of the fuselage. 
Suddenly the sky was filled with white puffs of silk, like a field of daisies 
in early spring.

Johnny spun around and rushed back towards the throne shouting hysterically in 
Inhutu, ‘Run! Run! The enemy is here. He will kill us all.’ Neither the 
king nor any of his subjects questioned Johnny’s sudden fluency in their 
language.

The girls leapt to their feet and raced for the door to the harem, screaming in 
terror.

King Justin heaved his bulk upright and harangued his bodyguard, pointing to 
the door onto the battlements, with his own flying spittle settling like dew 
drops on his snowy beard. His men ran towards the door, hefting their rifles 
and loading them with a clatter of breechblocks. All of them had their backs 
turned to Johnny and Sam.

Johnny spoke quietly to Sam out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Okay, Sam, 
let’s rock and roll.’

Carl Bannock dropped flat with his hands locked protectively over his head, and 
one cheek pressed to the filthy tiles. He was already whimpering with fear.

Johnny and Sam drew their weapons. They were both toting CV-75 9mm machine 
pistols. These had been concealed in the briefcases that each of them carried. 
The long, extended thirty-round magazines were already attached to the weapons. 
The stubby barrels were only accurate up to twenty-five yards, but the range 
was only half of that. They had the rate of fire selectors set at single rather 
than automatic. They started shooting.

Johnny took his uncle first, deliberately hitting him twice in the spine low 
down his back. The old man dropped to his knees and swayed, trying to keep his 
balance, until he crumpled forward onto his face. Then Johnny turned smoothly 
on the boy soldier. He was as dangerous as any of the older men. He head-shot 
him and saw the boy drop, his rifle clattering on the tiles beside his 
prostrate body.

By this time Sam also had two of his targets down, and the remaining militiamen 
were turning back to face them with astonished expressions. Johnny and Sam 
fired again simultaneously and two more went down. One of the surviving 
militiamen got off a short burst that hit the royal chamberlain and bowled him 
over backwards.

Johnny and Sam turned on him together. Sam tagged his right shoulder, but 
Johnny’s bullet smashed into his open mouth as he yelled a challenge. The two 
incisor teeth in the bottom of his jaw snapped off at the gums and the bullet 
went on to exit from the back of his skull. He went over backwards. Behind him 
the last man standing had dropped his piece and was racing for the door out 
onto the ramparts. Sam missed him, but Johnny hit him just above the left knee, 
shattering the bone of his femur. He went down sprawling and crawled through 
the open door, dragging the leg behind him and leaving a glistening blood-trail 
across the stone slabs. Johnny lifted his weapon to finish him off, but Sam 
stopped him.

‘He is mine. I know him. I owe him one.’ Johnny lowered his weapon and 
pointed it towards the floor.

‘Okay, Sam. He is all yours,’ he agreed affably.

Sam walked out onto the ramparts, changing the magazine on his CV-75 for one 
with a full load. He stood in front of the crippled man and said quietly but 
ominously in Swahili, ‘Look at me, comrade. Do you recognize me?’

The man looked up at his face with tears of shock and terror making his eyes 
swim, and Sam went on, ‘I am the one who you hit in the mouth with your 
rifle. I promised you that I would come back and now here I am.’

Recognition dawned in his eyes as he looked up at Sam’s face and read the 
promise of his death there.

‘Good!’ said Sam. ‘I see that you do remember me.’ Sam walked around 
him in a slow circle. He fired a shot into the back of his unwounded knee, 
breaking the bones, then he shot him twice more, low down in the small of his 
back, ensuring that his spinal column was completely severed. Both these were 
mortal wounds, but it would be a lingering death.

In the throne room Johnny went to where Carl had crawled into a corner and was 
covering his face with his folded arms. He was still whimpering. Johnny nudged 
him with his foot.

‘Everything is okay, Carl baby. Daddy has made the bogeyman go away. You can 
come out from under the blankets now and watch me say goodbye to my Uncle 
Justin.’

Carl lowered his arms and looked around timidly. He saw that all the opposition 
were down. He grinned with relief and scrambled to his feet. ‘I did not want 
to get in your way. I wasn’t afraid; really I wasn’t,’ he protested.

‘Of course you weren’t. I know you really are a brave little hero. You just 
don’t like loud noises.’ Johnny explained his behaviour for him. Carl 
followed him as he went to where King Justin lay. Standing over his uncle’s 
sprawling body, Johnny reloaded the machine pistol with a fresh magazine of 
ammunition.

‘He is still breathing,’ he exclaimed cheerily. He clapped Carl on the 
shoulder. ‘Have you ever killed a man, Carl baby?’

Carl shook his head wistfully. ‘I never had the chance. There is always 
somebody else to do it for me.’

‘Well, you’ve got the chance now. You can finish off Uncle Justin. Would 
you like that, white boy?’

Carl’s face lit up. ‘Hell, yes!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank you, Blackbird, I 
always wanted to try it.’

Johnny handed him the machine pistol and Carl took it and held it awkwardly.

‘Now, what do I do with it?’

‘You point it at the old bastard and pull the trigger.’

Carl lined up on the king’s body, turned his head away and closed his eyes. 
He pulled the trigger until his forefinger turned white with the pressure. Then 
he opened his eyes and turned back to Johnny. ‘It won’t shoot,’ he said 
plaintively.

‘Don’t point that piece at me.’ Gently Johnny pushed the barrel of the 
pistol to one side. ‘First, you have to let off the safety catch. Now try 
again. But this time try keeping your eyes open.’

Carl lined up again, braced himself and held the trigger down. The magazine 
emptied with the sound of tearing silk and the bullets ripped into the old 
man’s back like a chainsaw. Then the weapon fell silent.

‘It’s stopped shooting again, Johnny,’ Carl complained.

‘That’s because you have used up all the rounds.’

‘Is he dead yet?’

‘He should be. You nearly cut the old bastard in half. But did you enjoy 
that, Carl baby?’

‘Shit, yes! That was really cool. Thank you, Johnny.’

‘Any time, Carl baby. Any time at all.’

They sauntered out onto the ramparts to watch the last of the Zimbabwean 
paratroopers landing on the airstrip below the hill, and immediately begin 
securing the area. There was the sound of desultory gunfire. The Dakota circled 
the hill at low level and Johnny called the pilot on the satellite phone.

‘Good job, Chicken Soup! By the time you return we will have the strip 
serviceable. We will mark the runway for you with parachute silk.’

The Dakota banked away towards the south. Johnny turned to Sam.

‘Get down there and take command of your men. Round up as many of the locals 
as you can before they disappear into the bush. Get them cracking on cleaning 
up the airstrip. There is no call for celebrations until we have landed the 
remainder of the troops and seized total control of the country.’

Sam and his Zimbabweans had a section of the runway cleared by that evening 
when the Dakota returned. The aircraft landed and disembarked another sixty men 
and rations for the next ten days. There was just sufficient daylight remaining 
for the Dakota to take off and head back to Harare for its next load.

Over the next four days they shuttled in the rest of the Zimbabwean troops from 
Kariba and rations to keep them fed for the next few months. Then the motor 
launch delivered a full cargo of maize meal sacks from the depot in Kigoma 
across the lake.

At the first sound of gunfire King Justin’s little army, along with the 
entire civilian population of Kazundu, had vanished like smoke on a windy day.

This did not cause Carl and Johnny any real concern. With the lake in front of 
them and the jungle behind there was very little choice for these unfortunates. 
They knew what awaited them on the far side of the Congo border. They would be 
captured and put to work in the treacherous tunnels of the mines until they 
starved to death or were drowned or smothered in one of the inevitable mud 
rushes or cave-ins.

When the initial preparations had been completed Johnny was flown in the Dakota 
at low altitude over the lake shore and the jungle behind the port. The 
aircraft had a 700-watt Sky Shout loudspeaker system fitted under the fuselage. 
Through this King John Kikuu Tembo addressed his subjects in Inhutu. His voice 
boomed and echoed off the hills.

‘King Justin is dead! I am your new king. I am King Johnny. You will give me 
your total loyalty and obedience. In return I will care for you and feed you. 
Come to the old airport below the castle. Do not be afraid. I will not harm 
you. The boat from the south has brought a mountain of maize meal to feed you, 
so that you will not know hunger again. Your new King Johnny loves you. He will 
not harm you. He will feed you. He will give you work and pay you many silver 
shillings.’

Within hours the first of Johnny’s new subjects to test the veracity of the 
royal assurances issued timidly from cover. Only a fool would volunteer for 
such a hazardous assignment. These had been dragooned into the task. They were 
three skinny little black girls, all under the age of ten, dressed only in 
ragged loincloths. They were holding each other’s hands and weeping with 
terror.

When they saw Johnny Congo waiting for them on the airstrip they turned and 
fled squealing, back into the jungle. A short while later they were driven out 
again by their parents, still clinging to each other and sobbing. His Majesty 
patted them on the head and gave each of them a handful of cheap boiled sweets, 
a short length of brightly patterned cotton cloth and a large scoop of maize 
meal wrapped in a banana leaf. The trio raced back bearing their treasures, to 
be swiftly relieved of them by their waiting elders.

After another short interval the three little heroines came back again, leading 
their mothers and most of their other female relatives. The warriors of the 
tribe were still testing the waters. The ladies received their rations and 
rushed back to their menfolk ululating with joy. Then the boys were sent out. 
When they also survived their first encounter with the new King John, finally 
the men appeared.

Soon the airfield was filled with a noisy throng celebrating the death of the 
old king and the ascension of the munificent new monarch to the ivory throne of 
Kazundu.

Sam Ngewenyama and his men moved among them sorting the men and women into work 
battalions. The first task awaiting them was the repair of the airstrip and the 
lengthening of the runway to accept heavy modern freight-carrying aircraft. 
After that they could concentrate on the enlargement of the tiny harbour to 
prepare for the arrival of the shipments of building material and the heavy 
equipment.

*

The first aircraft to touch down on the renovated airstrip was an Antonov 
An-124 Condor of 1985 vintage which had seen many thousands of hours of service 
in the Russian military, before being sold on. It was a four-jet cargo carrier, 
one of the largest in service, with an enormous load-carrying capacity. Carl 
Bannock was the sixth registered owner. He had purchased it from an 
army-surplus dealer in Bulgaria. It was flown by two pilots who had been 
retired from the Russian air force on account of their age. They were both 
desperate for a job and Carl got them and the aircraft at a very favourable 
price.

With the reconditioned engines that Carl had ordered installed in Dubai, the 
Condor had sufficient range for a non-stop flight from Kazundu to Hong Kong or 
to Tehran. China was one of the world’s largest buyers of conflict coltan 
ore, while Iran desperately needed tantalite to pursue its quest for nuclear 
capability. Carl and Johnny were now able to provide their largest customers 
with a direct delivery service to their front doors.

The first cargo that the Condor flew into Kazundu comprised the massive diesel 
generator to power the castle and the satellite antenna and the full array of 
electronic communications apparatus that Carl needed to keep in instantaneous 
contact with the financial markets around the world. On the same flight came a 
team of seven highly paid experts who installed and operated all this equipment.

There was also a doctor on board the Antonov. He was taking up full-time 
employment with the new government of Kazundu to be instantly on hand to deal 
with the low-grade hypochondria with which Carl was afflicted.

From the same Bulgarian dealer who supplied the Condor, Carl had also procured 
a fleet of two Russian ex-naval landing craft. He had them fitted with new 
engines and delivered by freighter from the Bulgarian port of Varna on the 
Black Sea to Dar es Salaam, the chief port of Tanzania. The Condor flew down to 
the coast and flew them back to Kazundu, one at a time. They were capable of 
crossing the lake to Kigoma in a little over two hours and delivering fifty 
tons of cement or other building material on site with each crossing.

While this heavy labour was in progress Johnny Congo picked out all his 
deceased uncle’s former militiamen from amongst his subjects. The chosen men 
were amazed by his ability to identify them so readily. Johnny earned the 
reputation of possessing supernatural powers, which contributed largely to the 
awe in which he was regarded by his subjects. None of them tumbled to the 
simple fact that they were the best nourished segment of the entire Kazundian 
population and stood out belly and buttocks from the herd.

Johnny handed these conscripts over to Sam Ngewenyama to be fully trained as 
soldiers and enforcers to keep the rest of their tribal brothers and sisters 
hard at work. Breaking heads and kicking backsides was their employment of 
choice. They went to work with gusto in the service of King John and his white 
prime minister, His Excellency Carl Peter Bannock.

*

Once the infrastructure of the new Kazundian government was in place and 
running smoothly, Johnny assembled a band of his new bodyguard, thirty men 
strong and heavily armed. He sent envoys ahead of him to announce to the local 
Congolese warlords his imminent arrival in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 
and then, accompanied by Sam Ngewenyama and his bodyguard, he marched across 
the border. Carl decided against joining the expedition on the grounds of being 
unsuited to the job by his inability to speak any of the native languages and 
the importance of him staying in close contact with the movements of the global 
financial markets. For once Johnny did not brush his excuses aside and he left 
him with a lingering kiss on the mouth.

Johnny’s tour of the eastern Congolese provinces was a triumph. Every 
province was run by a local warlord and his own private army. They listened in 
barely suppressed glee as Johnny explained that he would pay in good American 
dollars for every ounce of coltan concentrates, every gram of gold, every carat 
of diamonds and every hundred-weight of cassiterite or wolframite delivered to 
him at the Kazundian border, where Johnny had his own accredited assayer 
waiting to test the purity of the ore and minerals.

As Johnny pointed out to the warlords, there was no risk to them. They would 
not lose sight of their goods until the money was safely in their hands.

It was only a few weeks after Johnny returned from this visit that long columns 
of porters began to arrive at the border crossing. They were shepherded and 
urged along by the shouts, kicks and whips of the armed men who accompanied 
them. These porters were mainly women, reeling along under sacks of raw 
minerals which they balanced on their heads. The men and the children were more 
usefully employed back in the underground workings of the primitive mines.





The weight of each porter’s burden was carefully matched to her individual 
strength and endurance. When one of them fell she was whipped to her feet and 
urged onwards. When she was finally unable to rise, her burden was shared out 
amongst the others in the column, who were already nearing their breaking 
points.

Then she was shot and her body left beside the track as an example and a 
warning to those who followed. The road to Kazundu through the forested hills 
soon became clearly defined not only by the passage of thousands of feet but 
also by the stench of the decaying corpses that lined the verges.

Very soon the first full load of coltan ore was ready for the Antonov Condor to 
carry to Hong Kong. On the return journey the Condor was ordered to stop over 
in Thailand to refuel and take on board a number of young Thai prostitutes, 
both male and female. Both Johnny and Carl found the Thai faces and petite 
bodies particularly pleasing. Johnny and Carl were particularly enamoured of 
the Thai ladyboys who pandered so perfectly to Johnny and Carl’s penchant for 
either or both sexes.

Johnny and Carl had assiduously shunned physical contact with the local 
Kazundians, who were, in contrast to the carefully screened Thai prostitutes, 
walking skeletons riddled with venereal disease.

After the first two years of King John’s rule, when the profits of the trade 
in the conflict minerals and Carl’s financial genius were reluctantly 
quadrupled by the trustees of the Henry Bannock Family Trust, Carl and Johnny 
turned their combined energies and vast fortune to transforming the castle on 
the hilltop from a pestilential ruin into a bright jewel mounted in the 
stupendous setting of lake, mountains and verdant jungle.

Over the next four years they flew in architects, landscape designers, 
hydro-engineers, master builders and others with specialized skills to help 
them to realize this vision. They shipped in high-quality building materials 
across the lake. They collected rare and beautiful artefacts, various types of 
exotic timber, paintings, silks and ceramics and other works of art and 
decorations from around the globe. They pumped up the lake waters to irrigate 
their hanging gardens on the hilltop, and to flow through subterranean caverns 
and pools, and then to tumble down artfully contrived cascades and waterfalls 
back into the mighty lake from which they had arisen.

To assist them in the realization of this masterpiece Carl Bannock selected the 
celebrated award-winning American architect Andrew Moorcroft of Moorcroft and 
Haye, who had designed the mansion on Forest Drive that Henry Bannock built for 
his family.

It gave Carl malignant pleasure to employ the man originally selected by his 
adoptive father and benefactor who he had destroyed, and whose family he had 
decimated.

*

Carl had carefully transferred to DVD several copies of the documentary movie 
that he had commissioned Amaranthus, the Mexican pornographic film maker, to 
shoot for him. Carl and Johnny never tired of watching it. Every few weeks they 
would sit entranced for a whole evening running and re-running the video. They 
always laughed delightedly at Bryoni’s final struggles in the mud and filth 
of the hog pen with the great black boar Hannibal.

Then at the end they joined in unison to mimic her death cry to her father; the 
cry that had killed Henry Bannock.

‘Daddy!’

It was Johnny who made the momentous suggestion. ‘Why don’t we build our 
own death pen?’

Carl seized upon the idea with glee. ‘Blackbird, you are a genius. It’s a 
brilliant idea. We could have our own live show whenever we wanted it.’

‘It would also be great for the discipline around here. Anybody who pisses us 
off, we just feed him to the pigs and make the others watch it.’ Johnny 
expanded the proposal, and Carl giggled like a teenage girl and hugged himself 
at the thought.

‘We could build an amphitheatre like the Colosseum in Rome; you know, where 
the ancient Roman emperors made the gladiators fight each other to the death 
and where they fed beautiful women to the lions and good stuff like that.’

‘I never heard about these guys before, but I like what you tell me about 
them. They must be real hectic dudes. We should go and see them sometime.’

‘We’re about two thousand years too late for that,’ Carl told him. ‘But 
we are just as cool as any spic with a bunch of leaves on his head. Like the 
man said, we can have anything we want because we are mega rich and super 
cool.’

‘You think pigs are that super cool, white boy?’ Johnny scoffed. ‘Surely 
we can do better than a bunch of pigs. How about a few lions, man? This is 
Africa, for Chrissake! Lions are cooler than pigs any day of the week.’

Carl thought about the suggestion for a moment and his expression sobered. ‘I 
don’t like lions.’ He shook his head. ‘They are dangerous, man.’

‘What’s so dangerous about a bunch of lions in a cage?’ Johnny demanded.

‘They run faster than pigs, if they escape from their cage. What if one got 
out of the cage? What about that, man? I don’t want to be there when that 
happens.’

‘Okay, what runs slow but eats people,’ Johnny pondered his own question.

‘How fast does a crocodile run, Johnny? Do you have any idea?’

‘I seen pictures of them crocodiles, man. They got short legs. I guess they 
don’t run so fast as no lions.’

‘Where would we get a couple of big man-eating crocodiles, Johnny?’

‘If you turn your head real slow and look behind you, man, you’ll see the 
biggest goddam lake in the world.’

Carl did as he suggested and swivelled around in his chair. They were sitting 
out on the castle battlements and the view across the water was stupendous. 
Nevertheless Carl corrected him primly. ‘That is not the biggest; it’s only 
the second biggest lake in the world.’

‘Looks like the biggest to me.’ Johnny brushed aside his protest. ‘I bet 
there are some monster crocodiles in there, white boy.’

‘I’ll go online and find out.’ Carl stood up and went into the throne 
room, which he had converted into his communications centre. He came back onto 
the battlements a few minutes later with a smug expression. ‘Pour me another 
Tusker beer, Blackbird,’ he said as he sat down opposite Johnny. ‘Give 
yourself one as well. You deserve it. You were right on both counts. Crocodiles 
can’t run as fast as a man, and anyway they would never run after you. They 
are stealth killers, not chasers. You just never see them coming, especially if 
you are near water. That’s score one to you.’ Carl took a pull at the beer 
can and belched. ‘Score two to you is that Lake Tanganyika and its tributary 
rivers…’ he indicated the inland sea with a sweep of his arm ‘… is the 
absolute homeland of Crocodylus niloticus.’

‘What the shit is that?’

‘That is the Nile crocodile, Johnny boy. There is one in that lake there that 
they say is twenty-five feet long. They call him Gustave. They say he could 
swallow even a big sucker like you without chewing.’

‘Just let one of those scaly bastards try that on me,’ said Johnny 
belligerently, then he threw back his head and let out a bellow. ‘Sam! 
Samuel! Get your lazy black ass out here!’

Sam came sauntering out onto the terrace, totally unperturbed by the wording of 
King Johnny’s summons. Johnny had only started referring to him in truly 
pejorative language after they had become true and trusted comrades in arms. 
Sam had signed on as Johnny’s second in command after the capture of Kazundu, 
when all the other Zimbabwean troops had been repatriated. Johnny had promoted 
him immediately to the rank of colonel. His scale of pay was several times 
greater than he had received in the Zimbabwean army. Among his other side 
benefits and perks he was granted third shot at any of the visiting oriental 
ladies or ladyboys after Carl and Johnny moved on down the line. Samuel 
Ngewenyama was a happy man.

‘Hello, Mr King. Did you call me?’

‘You know I did, you black bastard.’ Johnny handed him a can of Tusker 
beer. ‘We need some crocodiles, Sam.’

‘How many, boss?’

‘I don’t know, for sure. Let’s say two for a start, but make sure they 
are really big suckers, and make sure they are alive and hungry.’

‘I’ll put the word around, but it might take some time. Not a lot of people 
around here are happy to mess with crocodiles.’

‘That’s okay, Sam. We have still got to build a croc pen.’

Over the next few months they spent a great deal of time and energy planning 
and building the crocodile arena. The forced-labour gangs laboriously excavated 
the circular pit halfway down the front slope of the newly named Castle Hill. 
It did not have to be spacious, but Carl insisted that it was deep enough to 
prevent any of the inmates escaping and engaging him in a speed trial.

The walls of the arena were lined with stone blocks and flared inwards to make 
them unscalable. One of the artificial waterfalls was diverted so that the 
stream fell into the large pond that took up almost half the total area of the 
arena. The dry ground was strewn thickly with the golden brown beach sands of 
the lake. This would provide a basking ground on which the cold-blooded 
reptiles could sun themselves, and a wallowing basin in which to cool down 
again. On the stone coping that surrounded the top of the pit was seating for a 
hundred spectators and a special royal box for King John and his prime 
minister, which gave them an unimpeded overview of everything that happened on 
the floor of the amphitheatre. There was also a camera platform from which the 
action could be filmed.

There was a subterranean tunnel through which the floor of the pit could be 
reached via a sturdy croc-proof iron gate. In the stone lintel above this gate 
was chiselled the stern admonition: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

When Johnny read it for the first time he demanded, ‘Who the hell is Ye?’

‘Ye is anybody who goes through the gate,’ Carl explained patiently.

‘Did you think up that shit yourself?’

‘What a silly question, Blackbird. Of course I did,’ Carl assured him, and 
Johnny shook his head in admiration.

‘You pretty smart for a white boy; you know that, Carl baby?’

*

They heard the drums and the ululation in the harbour area, even from high up 
on the castle battlements.

‘We better go down and see what the hell is going on down there!’ Johnny 
suggested. The climbed into the brand-new white Range Rover that Carl had 
recently imported as Johnny’s birthday gift. Johnny took the wheel and they 
hurtled down the hill to the port, and parked on the wharf. The crowd had been 
driven back by the rifle butts of the Royal Bodyguards to leave them space.

Carl and Johnny stood on the edge of the stone wharf and shaded their eyes to 
stare out across the lake. A flotilla of native dugout canoes was coming down 
from the north. It was impossible to count them at this distance, but Carl 
estimated that there were at least twenty smaller craft, surrounding and 
escorting two much larger war canoes.

The drummers were seated amidships in the smaller canoes. They were pounding 
out a triumphant and primordial rhythm. The rowers were standing upright in 
bows and sterns, the long paddles dipping and swinging to the beat of the 
drums, tall lean men whose naked bodies gleamed in the sunlight like freshly 
washed anthracite. They chanted as they rowed.

The two great war canoes in the centre of the formation were deeply laden; each 
had only a few inches of freeboard. There were a dozen or more paddlers aside. 
As they came abeam the harbour they turned and headed in towards the beach. The 
crowds on the shore ran down the wharf and jumped onto the beach to meet them. 
Johnny and Carl followed them with Sam and his men running interference for 
them, whacking woolly heads and bare black shoulders with the heavy bamboo rods 
they always carried to clear the way.

They arrived at the water’s edge just as the largest war canoe ran its bows 
ashore. The spectators plunged waist deep into the lake to help run both the 
long canoes high and dry. Then they crowded around them laughing and jabbering 
with excitement and amazement as they saw the cargo that they carried. The 
bodyguards cleared them away to allow Carl and Johnny to come forward and stare 
down on the massive beasts that lay in the bottom of the canoes. Their jaws had 
been roped closed with plaited papyrus reeds, and they had been blindfolded 
with old maize sacks to keep them quiescent.

Johnny paced out the length of the largest crocodile, and then he whistled with 
awe. ‘This sucker is five paces long, that makes him over sixteen feet. How 
the hell did they catch him?’

‘They built a long trap of poles and put a goat into it for bait,’ Sam 
Ngewenyama explained. ‘Once they cover his eyes the crocodile goes to 
sleep.’

It took a gang of twenty men to drag the quiescent monster up the loading ramp 
of one of the Russian landing craft, and only then could they motor him up to 
the crocodile arena. Another gang of fifty men lowered him into the pit on the 
ropes.

The second crocodile was a mere twelve feet long. She was a presumed female, 
although in the absence of external genitalia it was not possible to be 
certain. They laid them side by side on the basking sands of the arena beside 
the pool while Carl and Johnny leaned over the railing around the top of the 
arena, shouting instructions.

‘Take the blindfolds off their eyes now!’ Johnny gave the order in Swahili. 
Two of the bolder spirits obeyed and the rest of them scattered and fled, 
jamming in the exit tunnel in their haste to return to safety.

The two monstrous saurians sluggishly roused themselves from their stupor. Then 
they waddled on their stubby legs to the algae-green pool and slid down the 
bank into the lukewarm water. There they lay submerged with only their eyes and 
nostrils showing above the surface.

Johnny shouted at Sam to pay the croc hunters their bounty. Sam counted out the 
thick wads of Tanzanian shillings into the hands of the tribal headman who had 
commanded the capture operation. It was sufficient cash to buy a large herd of 
cattle. The headman marched away down the hill, followed by his men singing and 
drumming with exultation.

Johnny and Carl were left alone on the stone seats of the royal box to gloat 
over their new pets.

‘We have to give them names,’ Carl mused. ‘What do you suggest?’

Johnny frowned with concentration and then said, ‘How about we call them Big 
Sucker and Little Sucker?’

‘Not a bad idea! Very poetic!’ Carl nodded thoughtfully. ‘But I like the 
name Hannibal the same as in the Daddy video.’

They both laughed at the memory, and Johnny punched his arm fondly. ‘That’s 
cool, Carl baby. I am glad you thought of that one. We call the big sucker 
Hannibal and the little sucker Aline.’

‘Who?’ Carl looked puzzled.

‘Aline, man, Hannibal Gaddafi’s wife. She was a super cool chick. She liked 
to pour boiling water on the heads of her servants if they pissed her off.’

‘I thought we were speaking about Hannibal the son of Hamilcar Barca the 
scourge of Rome, not Hannibal the son of Muammar Gaddafi,’ Carl chuckled. 
‘But never mind me, anybody can make a silly mistake. Aline, the lady 
crocodile shall be.’

‘I love her already,’ Johnny confessed.

‘Let’s prove your love. Have you got anybody in mind for dinner with our 
Aline? Has anybody pissed you off recently?’ Carl asked. ‘People are always 
pissing you off, aren’t they, Johnny baby?’

‘You are right on, white boy. I don’t know why they always take advantage 
of me. I guess I am just too kind to all these assholes.’

‘Pick one of them, any one of them.’

‘Sam caught one of them in the grain store last night stealing a bucket of 
maize meal. Stupid cow claims her snivelling kids were starving.’

‘That’s unforgivable,’ Carl agreed. ‘Anyone in their right mind gotta 
be pissed off at that kind of behaviour. Tell Sam to bring her up here.’

The woman was so paralysed with fear that she could not walk. Two of Sam’s 
men dragged her up the hill to confront King John.

‘Do you know what is in that hole?’ Johnny pointed at the pit. The woman 
shook her head.

‘Well I am going to put you in there to find out for me.’ The woman stared 
at him in dumb incomprehension.

‘Her expression is so beautifully comical. Does she know what’s going to 
happen, do you think?’ Carl asked.

‘No,’ Johnny replied. ‘Sam has had her chained in one of the castle 
dungeons since her arrest. She hasn’t seen the crocs yet. It will be a nice 
surprise for her.’ Johnny turned to the men that held her and told them, 
‘Get her clothes off. Take her down the steps and put her into the hole.’

They stripped the woman’s limbo cloth off her body and dragged her down the 
stairway to the barred gate. While Carl and Johnny hung over the rail to watch 
they opened the gate and thrust her through it, then slammed it shut behind her.

She beat on the iron bars of the gate with her bare fists until her knuckles 
bled. Then she looked up at the men above her, wailing and pleading for mercy.

‘Come here,’ Johnny called to her in Swahili. ‘Come and I will lift you 
up.’ She left the gate and went hesitantly towards where he was leaning over 
the coping of the stone wall and beckoning to her. She skirted the edge of the 
pool without looking down at the water.

Suddenly the algae-green surface of the pool exploded with such violence that 
the two men leaning over the rail high above were dashed with spray. Hannibal 
launched himself from the pond like a great grey torpedo.

He did not open his jaws to seize his victim; instead he kept them tightly 
closed so that the protruding fangs in his top jaw overlapped his lower lip in 
a fixed sardonic grin. He swung his whole head at her. The scales that covered 
his skull were tough as chain mail. He hit the woman in her rib cage as she 
lifted her arm towards Johnny Congo. She was hurled by the blow into the stone 
cladding of the pit wall. Her ribs crackled like fire kindling as they snapped. 
She fell in a heap at the foot of the wall.

Hannibal opened his jaws to their full gape as he reared over her, and then he 
locked his long yellow fangs into her body. His jaws clashed together like the 
slamming of the iron-barred gate. Hannibal lifted the body high, holding it 
crosswise in his jaws, so that just the woman’s toes and fingertips dragged 
in the sand as he carried her back towards the pool.

Then the green water erupted a second time.

‘Here comes the gorgeous Aline to join the fun,’ Carl shouted with 
excitement. The female rushed out of the pond at Hannibal, but he made no move 
to avoid her. Instead he checked and turned his head towards her, almost as 
though he was offering her the naked body he held in his jaws.

Then with a toss of his monstrous head he threw the woman high and caught her 
again as she dropped; but now he was gripping only one of the woman’s arms.

The woman was screaming shrilly as Aline gaped and then snapped her jaws shut 
on her legs. When both of the great reptiles had a grip on her they performed 
an extraordinarily well-rehearsed manoeuvre. Both of them went into the death 
roll. Hannibal spun his huge body to the right. His butter-yellow belly flashed 
in the sunlight for a moment before he came back onto his clawed feet. At the 
same time Aline rotated herself to the left. Neither of them released their 
grip on the woman as they spun in opposite directions.

‘Will you look at that?’ Johnny shouted. ‘What the hell are they doing?’

‘They can’t bite off lumps of meat with their spiky teeth. They have to 
twist it off.’ Carl had read up online about crocodile behaviour, and he was 
eager to show off his knowledge.

Between the two great beasts the woman’s limbs were plucked from her trunk 
like the wings from a well-roasted chicken.

‘Look at that! Those suckers are doing just like you said.’ Johnny was 
properly impressed by Carl’s erudition.

As her body was torn apart and the blood spurted from the ruptured arteries, 
some of it splashed Carl. He was so engrossed with the spectacle that he did 
not seem to notice it.

Both crocodiles backed away, crunching flesh and bone in their jaws and gulping 
it down.

Then Hannibal came back to the remains of the corpse and lifted it in his jaws, 
and waddled with it into the pool. Aline followed him into the water and they 
resumed their cooperative feeding. In the water they were able to spin 
themselves with less effort. It was an unhurried and orderly dismemberment and 
feasting.

Aline spun the entrails out of the woman’s remains. Then Hannibal took his 
turn and twisted the woman’s head off her shoulders. He crushed her skull in 
his jaws, popping it like an overripe melon, and swallowed it with one 
convulsive gulp.

The two men on the top of the wall watched with total fascination. As Aline 
tore off the woman’s remaining arm and chewed the bones to splinters the pink 
palmed hand flapped out of the corner of her mouth.

‘Look at that.’ Johnny roared with laughter. ‘She’s waving us 
goodbye!’

‘Just like my little sister Bryoni, she’s saying goodbye to Daddy.’ Carl 
put the cadence on the final word, and they hugged each other with glee. At 
last Johnny pulled back, still panting with laughter.

‘I’ll say it again, only a living and breathing genius could have thought 
up a crocodile live-show. That was one of the coolest things I have ever 
watched. We have to do this more often.’

‘Don’t have any sleepless nights about that, Blackbird. I will see to it 
that Hannibal and Aline will always have as much as they can eat.’

*

A week after the opening and stocking of the crocodile pen, and the first human 
offering, there was the usual convivial pre-dinner gathering in the throne room 
of the castle.

Samuel Ngewenyama was dancing with the Thai ladyboy who had ultimately been 
passed down to him by Carl and Johnny. King Johnny was playing strip mah-jong 
with another ladyboy and a female who was fully equipped by nature rather than 
by surgery. Johnny set the rules of the mah-jong game, which differed widely 
from the original Chinese version. Johnny’s two opponents had picked up his 
linguistic foibles and there was much chatter and giggling over ‘fluckin 
klongs’ and ‘flucking flowers’.

Carl and one of the other Thai visitors, who was appropriately named Am-Porn, 
were watching the CNN channel on satellite television. Carl in particular was 
waiting for the closing prices on the NY Stock Exchange. Am-Porn was seated on 
his lap, modestly dressed in a high-neck silk cheongsam, but the tight skirt 
was rucked up as high as her belly button. Below that it was abundantly 
apparent that she was not a ladyboy. Carl was passing the time before the news 
reports by idly exploring this exposed area.

On the TV screen the CNN anchorman began reading the news. Suddenly Carl leapt 
to his feet, depositing Am-Porn on the Persian carpet as he snatched up the 
remote control and pointed it at the TV set and boosted the volume. The voice 
of the anchorman boomed through the throne room.

‘The gruesome murder of Cayla Bannock is reminiscent of the 1974 horror movie 
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The head of the decapitated girl was sent to her 
mother by the killer.’ A series of photographs of the lovely blonde Cayla 
flashed on the screen. In one she was riding a thoroughbred Arab stallion and 
in another she was dressed in an evening gown for her high school prom.

‘The girl’s mother is Mrs Hazel Bannock, the widow of the oil magnate Henry 
Bannock. She has succeeded her husband as the CEO of the Bannock Oil 
Corporation. Mrs Hazel Bannock is reputed to be one of the ten richest women in 
the world.’

Johnny jumped up from the mah-jong table and came to join Carl in front of the 
TV. They switched from channel to channel and found the story was being carried 
right across the American continent, but hard facts were limited and all the TV 
stations were relying heavily on their archives for fillers.

‘There is only one thing that is certain,’ Carl said as he switched off the 
TV. ‘And there is only one thing that is important.’

‘What is that, white boy?’

‘That the bitch is dead.’

‘They’ve got her head to prove it.’ Johnny guffawed and flung one massive 
arm around Carl’s shoulders. ‘Congratulations, Carl baby. Only one more 
bitch to go down and all that sweet green lettuce is going to be yours.’

‘You are talking about Hazel Bannock here,’ Carl agreed. ‘I think it’s 
time for you to call in your boyfriend Aleutian Brown again.’

‘I wonder what it’s going to feel like screwing a billionaire?’ Johnny 
pondered the question.

*

Hector read to the bottom of the last page of ‘The Poisoned Seed’ on the 
screen of his computer. Then he rocked back in his chair and shook his head, as 
if to clear it. It was a long way back from the riotous and bizarre halls of 
Kazundu Castle to his civilized and urbane study in The Cross Roads.

He glanced at his wristwatch and grimaced with disbelief. Then he checked the 
time on the screen of his computer.

‘Good God! Where did the day go?’ It was after four o’clock in the 
afternoon. He reached for the phone and dialled Jo’s number.

She answered on the second ring. ‘So, you finally remembered that I exist. 
How very nice of you, Hector Cross,’ she said. ‘I have been waiting on the 
edge of my seat for you to call.’

‘Forgive me, Jo. I am an utter bastard.’

‘I defer to your superior knowledge on that subject.’ But there were 
undercurrents of laughter in her tone. ‘Has anything interesting happened 
since we met so long ago?’

‘I read a book,’ he said.

‘Your first, no doubt?’

‘Who is being wicked now? Shall we call a truce?’

‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘How was the book?’

‘Stunning! Absolutely riveting. I have to see you immediately, if not sooner, 
to discuss it with you. Where are you, Jo?’

‘Sitting all forsaken and forlorn in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel. My 
business lunch broke up earlier than I expected.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you just grab a cab and come here?’

‘I don’t know the address. I was thinking about other things when you took 
me there yesterday.’

‘Don’t go anywhere. I am coming to fetch you. I’ll be there in ten 
minutes.’

She came dancing down the hotel entrance steps as he drew up in the Bentley at 
the kerb. She was dressed in a dark business suit, and mink bunny jacket. He 
jumped out to open the passenger door for her, but she came directly to him and 
offered her cheek for him to kiss. Her cheek was silky and warm. She ducked 
into the front seat of the Bentley and her skirts pulled up well above the 
knee. She saw the direction of his gaze and she smoothed them down. Her 
expression was inscrutable.

He took the wheel and as he pulled out into Park Lane he said, ‘If I told you 
that I missed you, it would be a lie, because you have been with me since early 
this morning.’

‘I have got your attention then, have I?’

‘My sweet Lord, Jo, you have written some tough stuff in there. A lot of 
it’s enough to turn the strongest stomach.’

‘That is why I could not bring myself to tell you. It was enough to write 
down the words, let alone to speak them to your face.’

‘Still and all, I have a few questions,’ he said, and she turned in her 
seat towards him.

‘I would be very worried if you didn’t.’

‘When I say a few questions, I mean plenty of questions.’

‘I’m not planning on going anywhere soon. I’m yours for as long as you 
need me.’

‘That may be longer than you anticipate.’

Her eyes softened, and she smiled. ‘Must you read a double meaning into 
everything I say? Ask your questions, mister, and try to be serious.’

‘First question: is what you wrote the truth?’

‘Yes. It’s absolutely true.’

‘But how did you gather so much detail?’

‘Both Henry Bannock and his daughter Bryoni were avid diarists. I suppose 
Bryoni learned from her daddy. I have access to all their diaries. These are 
detailed descriptions of their lives. I know everything and I have written it 
all down for you.’

‘But, how did you get hold of the diaries?’

‘When both Henry and Bryoni died your wife, Hazel, went through all their 
belongings. She picked out all the valuable and very sensitive material, 
including their diaries, and asked Ronnie Bunter to seal it all in the Bunter 
and Theobald archives. Ronnie and I unsealed it. Reading it was like speaking 
directly to the dead. I found it a terribly moving experience.’ Hector shook 
his head in wonder, and Jo went on speaking. ‘Of course, that was not my only 
source of information. I had all the accumulated records of the trust open to 
me; all Henry’s letters and emails, not to mention all correspondence with 
the beneficiaries.’

‘Carl Bannock? Did you actually meet him just as you wrote in The Poisoned 
Seed?’

‘Yes; I had that dubious pleasure.’

Hector laughed. ‘So you were on the inside track when it came to describing 
him.’

‘I also have a raft of his photographs from elementary school days right up 
to the present time. I know the exact amount of every payment he received from 
the trust. I have copies of all his correspondence and records of all his 
meetings with the trustees, and the records of his trial; all of it and more.’

‘What about Johnny Congo?’

‘That is him in real life, just as I described him. I have his military 
records and the court records of his trial and conviction for multiple murders. 
Most of it is on those flash drives I gave you yesterday.’

A scarlet Maserati with Saudi registration plates changed traffic lanes 
abruptly in front of them, and forced Hector to brake sharply.

‘I suggest that you should concentrate on the traffic until we get back to 
your home, Hector.’

‘Excellent advice,’ Hector conceded.

Hector parked in his exclusive slot at the front door of The Cross Roads, and 
let them in with his own key before Stephen could get up from the basement.

‘We are going to be in the study for a while,’ he told the butler. ‘Make 
sure we are not interrupted. Not even a phone call, please.’

As soon as Hector ushered her into his study Jo’s eyes went to the wall 
facing his desk. She came up short, staring at the wall. He bumped into her 
from behind, but placed his hands on her hips to steady her.

‘What is it, Jo?’

‘You have changed the painting,’ she said in a small voice. The summer 
portrait of Hazel in the wheat field was gone. In its place there hung a 
colourful David Hockney landscape of the English countryside.

‘Don’t you like it? Unlike the Gauguin you noticed downstairs, this is an 
original.’

‘Hazel has gone?’

‘Yes, Hazel has gone. I had a lot of resistance from Stephen. He didn’t 
want to do it.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why did you change it?’

‘Let me take your jacket.’ He slipped the mink off her shoulders and led 
her to a chair. ‘Make yourself comfortable while I get us some coffee. Then I 
will explain to you why I did it.’

He placed the coffee cup in front of her, but she did not touch it. He went to 
his seat and sat facing her. He lifted his own cup halfway to his lips and then 
replaced it on the saucer without tasting it. He interlocked his fingers and 
leaned back in his swivel chair, touching his chin with his thumbs.

‘Hazel left me a posthumous letter,’ he said and she nodded without taking 
her eyes off his. ‘It was a long letter but the last paragraph was the one 
that was the most poignant.’ His voice broke slightly and he coughed to clear 
his throat before he went on. ‘I remember every word of it by heart. I want 
to tell it to you, because it affects us directly. May I recite it to you, 
Jo?’

She nodded slowly. ‘If you feel you would like to,’ she agreed.

‘This is what Hazel wrote. “Do not pine too long over my departure. 
Remember me with joy, but find yourself another companion. A man like you was 
never designed to live like a monk. However, make sure she is a good woman, or 
else I will come back and haunt her.’”

She said nothing, but she went on staring at him. Then her expression softened 
and she began to weep silently. ‘My poor Hector,’ she whispered. Still 
without lowering her gaze she opened the handbag in her lap and took out a 
Kleenex tissue; she dabbed at her eyes.

‘Please don’t pity me, Jo,’ he said. ‘I have done enough of that on my 
own account. I have passed through the valley of the shadow, and now I am 
coming out into the sunshine again; back into the happy land of laughter and 
love. I have Catherine Cayla and now I have found…’

She raised her hand to stop him. ‘Please, Hector. I need a few minutes alone. 
I look a mess when I cry. Please let me go to the bathroom to fix my 
make-up.’ He jumped to his feet solicitously and came to her, but she smiled 
at him through the tears.

‘I know my way around here,’ she said. ‘Drink your coffee and I will be 
back presently.’

*

When she returned she had fully recovered her composure. ‘I am so sorry for 
that performance, Hector,’ she told him. ‘Female histrionics is the very 
last thing you need now. I promise that it won’t happen again.’

‘Don’t apologize, Jo. It is proof that you are the lovely caring person I 
judged you to be.’

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘You’ll start me off again, blubbering all over the 
place. We were talking about Johnny Congo. We can come back to this other 
subject later.’

‘Very well. I agree both of us need to calm down a little before one of us 
says something they may regret. Johnny Congo it shall be. My last question was 
“How do you know so much detail about him?’”

‘My reply was that I have a huge amount of documentation on him from his 
military records to his court and prison records.’

‘I accept that, Jo. But here in “The Poisoned Seed” you have given us his 
direct speech. I am going to play the Devil’s advocate now. The language you 
have put into Johnny’s mouth seems very mild and proper for somebody like 
that.’

‘That’s very perceptive of you, Hector.’ Jo dropped her eyes from his. 
‘I could not bring myself to write down his exact words. He has the filthiest 
mouth I have ever conceived of. Almost every sentence that he utters includes 
the four-letter copulatory expletive. Of course the overutilization of that 
sort of language is the hallmark of a limited vocabulary and a stunted 
intelligence. Ronnie and I have hours of tape recordings of Johnny and Carl in 
conversation with each other. That is how they speak to each other. After a 
very short time it loses its shock effect and becomes trivial and boring. But I 
could not bring myself to include it, not even to portray Johnny Congo’s 
character more accurately,’ Jo replied. ‘I simply edited it out. I don’t 
think it changed the sense and meaning in the least.’

‘No, I don’t accept that without further explanation. Where did you and 
Ronnie get all these tape recordings from?’

‘This is why I wanted to write it all down in chronological order. It’s 
such a complicated story that I don’t want to chop and change backwards and 
forwards trying to explain and justify myself and my story. It will only make 
it all more confused and difficult to understand. I want to present it in a 
logical sequence.’

‘Okay. I will try and restrain myself.’

‘Before we deal with the provenance of the recordings, I want to tell you 
what else I have for you. I have all the floor plans and architectural drawings 
of the interior of the Kazundian castle on the hill. I think you might find 
them useful, for finding your way around if you ever get inside.’

He stared at her for a moment in astonishment. ‘Good Lord; where did you get 
your hands on all this…’ He broke off in mid-sentence. ‘You already told 
me in your story; the architect from Houston, what’s his name? Andrew 
Moorcroft, wasn’t he? You must have had a reason for including his name so 
early in the story.’

‘Full marks!’ Jo applauded him. ‘Go to the top of the class. Andrew is a 
friend of Ronnie Bunter. They were classmates at Harvard. They drifted apart 
but they met up again at the memorial service for your lovely wife Hazel in the 
Presbyterian Church in Houston. The two of them picked up their friendship 
again and were discussing events that had taken place in the interim. Andrew 
knew Ronnie was the trustee of the Bannock Trust and so he casually mentioned 
the work he had done for Carl Bannock in Africa. He took it for granted that 
Ronnie would know all about it, but of course Ronnie jumped on it, and asked 
for all the details. Andrew was able to give him copies of all his plans of the 
castle on the hill in Kazundu.’

‘Now it all starts to make sense,’ Hector conceded. ‘That explains how 
you got your hands on the architect’s drawings, but what about the voice 
recordings of Carl and Johnny Congo that you spoke of?’

‘That was also with Andrew Moorcroft’s assistance,’ Jo explained. 
‘Apparently Carl had asked Andrew for a recommendation; somebody to install 
his electronics. Andrew told him about Emma Purdom and her team who are based 
in Texas. Emma is an electronics whizz-kid. Carl went along with Andrew’s 
recommendation and employed Emma; and she took her team out to Kazundu. She 
installed all the communications and surveillance in the castle. However, Carl 
treated Emma badly. He swindled her out of several hundred thousand dollars. 
Like many acknowledged geniuses, Carl can sometimes be really stupid. Emma is 
not a good person to cheat. When Ronnie and I approached her she was delighted 
to help us out. It was a breeze for her, while sitting in her workshop in 
Houston, to hack into her own bugs in Kazundu. She downloaded Carl’s tapes 
for us, all of them from the first to the last.’

‘It all fits together. Except for one small detail: the crocodile arena. If I 
have followed the story correctly, Carl set that up very recently, long after 
Andrew and Emma Purdom had returned to Texas. How do you know about it?’

‘Thanks to Emma Purdom again,’ she told him. ‘While Emma was in Kazundu 
she struck up a friendship with the local missionary priest who was in charge 
of the little church and school across the lake in Kigoma. Emma set up a 
computer program for the black schoolkids. Even after she left Africa she kept 
in regular touch with the priest and his kids. She chats with them online all 
the time. They kept her informed about everything that was going on around the 
lake shore. The capture of the giant crocs was big news for them. Then later 
there were ugly rumours about how Carl and Johnny fed their pets. They passed 
all this on to Emma. I knew about the fate they had meted out to Bryoni. It 
didn’t take much imagination to put the two stories together.’

‘Okay, I’ll buy it all. I think you have a great future as a novelist. In 
fact I think you are a marvel; a living and breathing gift from the gods.’

‘I think the same of you,’ she replied. ‘However, I suggest that you 
allow me to hurry along with my story.’

‘No great hurry,’ he told her. ‘It’s getting on towards dinner time and 
I know Cynthia has dreamed up one of her masterpieces. You will stay for 
dinner, won’t you?’

‘That sounds wonderful. I would love to dine here with you.’

Hector phoned through to the kitchen to warn Cynthia of the extra guest.

‘That will be perfectly fine, sir. I have already made provision for Miss 
Stanley,’ she answered.

‘They are always well ahead of me,’ Hector grumbled as he hung up. ‘But 
at least we have the whole evening ahead of us. You don’t have to rush.’

‘Very well, then; I intend to make the most of it, I warn you,’ she assured 
him. ‘Next bit of breaking news is that the FBI is also interested in the 
affairs of Carl and Johnny.’

‘Damn it! Are they going to beat me to it? This is my business entirely; they 
should keep their noses out of it.’

‘This is how it stands now,’ Jo replied. ‘Congo is one of the most wanted 
men in the USA. In addition to the multiple murders for which he was convicted, 
there was also the killing of Lucas Heller during the prison break. Lucas was 
regarded as a law enforcement officer. It’s not a good idea to kill one of 
those. When it was clear that Johnny had fled the US of A, the FBI was called 
in. The investigation was difficult and protracted. In the beginning nobody 
suspected that Carl Bannock was implicated. Congo had simply disappeared, and 
there were no clues to his whereabouts. The time passed, but the FBI never let 
up.’

Jo paused to gather her thoughts, and then she went on, ‘Finally, in a 
seemingly unrelated matter the IRS began to investigate Marco Merkowski, warden 
of Holloway Prison, for tax evasion. He had been unable to account for being in 
possession of large sums of money in offshore banking accounts. Merkowski was 
brought to trial for tax evasion and sentenced to five years’ detention. The 
FBI was able to link the timing of Johnny Congo’s prison break with Marco’s 
unexplained cash windfall. They offered Marco a deal if he would cooperate with 
their investigation of the Congo escape.’

‘I bet Merkowski jumped at the chance to get out of jail free,’ Hector 
suggested.

‘He nearly tripped over his own feet in the rush,’ Jo agreed. ‘So the FBI 
was finally able to make the connection between Carl, Congo and the Henry 
Bannock Family Trust. They came to Ronnie Bunter as the head trustee. Even 
though over the years Ronnie had been in regular contact with Carl by email, 
Ronnie still had no idea where Carl was hiding. Living a double life and 
protecting Johnny Congo, Carl had become an expert at covering his tracks. 
Nevertheless Ronnie Bunter had to tell the FBI that his relationship with Carl 
was client and attorney, and he could not divulge any information about the 
Trust or its beneficiaries without committing breach of trust.’

The intercom rang and Jo broke off to let Hector reply. ‘Thank you, Cynthia. 
Yes, we are ready for dinner right about now.’ He glanced enquiringly at Jo 
and she nodded agreement. ‘You can ask Stephen to be ready to serve it in 
about ten minutes.’ Hector switched off the intercom and turned back to Jo. 
‘Would you like to wash your hands and then we can go down. Cynthia has the 
temperament of a great artist. When she says “Eat!” we eat.’

Once they were seated at the dining table Jo picked up the tale again. ‘So 
the FBI petitioned the Supreme Court for a Disclosure of Information Order 
against the Henry Bannock Family Trust and its trustees. Ronnie, as was his 
duty as head trustee, defended the case and when it went against him he 
appealed. We lost again on appeal, so Ronnie had to admit defeat and do what 
his own moral principles had urged him to do all along. He gave everything we 
had on Carl and Johnny Congo to the FBI. This happened long before Ronnie and 
Andrew Moorcroft met again. Even with what we gave them at that time the mighty 
FBI were still unable to locate Carl and Johnny.’

‘So are you and Ronnie now obliged to give the FBI the information that you 
gained recently from Andrew and Emma Purdom, pinpointing Carl’s 
whereabouts?’ he asked, and Jo sighed.

‘That’s a moot point, Hector. Ronnie and I have convinced ourselves that 
the Disclosure Order is only valid for information that we received up until 
the date of the order, and we are willing to take a chance on that assumption. 
Even if the FBI gets wind of the true situation and demands that we give them 
up-to-date information we are prepared to appeal their decision. So you have 
about a year without interference from Big Brother to do what you have to do.’

‘What do you think I have to do, Jo Stanley?’

‘My throat is sore from all this talking.’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘I 
cannot say another word. As a lawyer, I certainly cannot incite you to commit a 
felony, such as killing or kidnapping anybody. You are a big boy, Hector Cross. 
You know what you must do. You don’t need me to tell you.’

‘I agree with you on the last bit, Jo. I do know what I must do right now. I 
must see to it that you enjoy your dinner, and pay full respect to the rather 
decent wine that I have chosen for us. I think that we have both had enough of 
Carl and Johnny for one day. Let’s talk of more salubrious matters for the 
rest of the evening, and come back to them again tomorrow morning.’

For the rest of the dinner they spoke only about each other. Of course she knew 
almost everything about him, but he knew very little about her. He listened 
with his full attention and almost everything she had to tell him tended to 
confirm the high opinion he was forming of her. By the time they had finished 
the main meal there was a powerful and almost tangible undercurrent running 
between them. He realized that the removal of Hazel’s portrait from his study 
wall had set their relationship on a new course. They could look into each 
other’s eyes candidly and with trust. Each of them knew that they had reached 
an unspoken agreement. They were relaxed and trusting in each other.

When Stephen cleared away the plates, and Hector asked her, ‘Dessert? Cheese? 
Cigars?’ she laughed and shook her head.

‘It was a great meal, but I think I will pass on the cigars, thank you.’

‘We can go through to the sitting room for coffee, then,’ he suggested. He 
stood up and went behind her seat and helped her draw back her chair, and then 
he gave her his arm and took her through to the sitting room.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said when she saw the fire in the grate. They stood 
in front of it with their backs to the warmth. She moved a little closer to 
him, and looked up to him. They held each other’s gaze as he bowed his head 
over her, and her lips parted slightly, her breath came quicker.

It was their first real kiss, a statement and a promise. At the end of it they 
were clinging to each other. He spoke at last with their lips only inches 
apart, and they each had the taste of the other in their mouths. ‘I mean 
this, Jo,’ he said.

‘So do I,’ she whispered.

‘Please stay with me tonight,’ he said, and she hesitated for a long moment 
before she replied.

‘Hector, I am not going to pull any punches. I knew a great deal about you 
even before we actually met, and I thought you must be a fascinating man. Then 
I met you for the first time and I discovered you were exactly what I had hoped 
you would be.’ She looked up at him and there was green fire in her eyes. 
‘I have wanted you ever since that day, but I knew it was still far too soon 
for you. I was prepared to wait. But now I think that I have waited long 
enough. You have taken down the portrait in your study. For me that was an 
important statement. For me there is no turning back from here.’

He opened his mouth to reply to her, but she reached out quickly and placed her 
forefinger on his lips.

‘Wait! Hear me out, please. I am not a simpering virgin, but neither am I a 
tramp. I was even married once, admittedly not for very long. However, I have 
never before jumped into bed with a man without a lot of careful thought and 
consideration.’

Gently he lifted her hand away from his mouth. ‘We don’t have to say 
anything more. From here onwards too many words may spoil what seems to me good 
and right. Being in love is fun, let’s have fun, Jo, my darling.’

‘That’s the first time you ever called me darling, Hector darling.’

‘May I show you the way upstairs?’

‘Come along!’ she said. ‘Show me which stairs in particular we are 
talking about here.’

They stopped at the foot of the staircase. ‘It’s so far to the top,’ she 
said. ‘I swear I don’t think I can make it without a little more 
encouragement.’

She turned towards him, took hold of the lapels of his jacket, lifted her face 
to his and stood on her tiptoes. He drew her closer and bowed his head to kiss 
her again. Her arms slipped around his neck. Their bodies melded. Her mouth was 
hot and he could smell the natural musk of her arousal blending with her 
perfume. He wanted her. His body was racked by the need for her. He picked her 
up in his arms and she kept her arms locked around his neck and her mouth glued 
to his.

He ran with her up the stairs and she laughed into his mouth. ‘You crazy man! 
If you fall you’ll kill us both.’

‘I fell already, and we survived.’

‘Only just,’ she said.

Still with her in his arms he pushed open the bedroom door with his shoulder 
and carried her through. Then he kicked the door closed behind them and carried 
her across the room to place her on her feet, facing the floor-to-ceiling 
mirror.

He stood behind her with his arms clasped around her, looking over her shoulder 
and studying her image in the glass.

‘I cannot get over how lovely you are,’ he said.

She took his hands and placed them over her breasts. ‘I think I look a lot 
better like this. It certainly feels better.’ She was watching his eyes in 
the mirror.

He unbuttoned the front of her blouse and she dropped her arms to allow him to 
slip the blouse off her shoulders. He tossed it over the foot of the bed and 
then cupped her breasts again and squeezed them together softly.

‘They are so big.’ He kissed her ear from behind and she shivered.

‘You are giving me goose bumps,’ she said. ‘Inside and out.’

He unhooked the clasp of her bra between her bosoms, and then he tossed the bra 
onto the bed on top of her blouse. He reached around again and took her nipples 
between finger and thumb of both his hands and milked them gently. Her nipples 
stiffened, thrust out their tips and turned the colour of ripening mulberries 
as the blood rushed into them. He pulled them out as far as they would go and 
then released them. They bounced back as though made of rubber.

‘I hope you are having fun?’ She tried to make her voice stern, but her 
breath was gusty.

‘I cannot remember when I ever had more fun. As the man said, being in love 
is fun.’ He kissed her shoulder. ‘Your skin is so white and smooth.’

He ran his fingertips down from her breasts to her navel. Her belly was 
concave, white and warm as marble in the sunlight.

‘Do you think I am fat?’ she asked, the ubiquitous feminine question.

‘I’ll kill anyone who answers yes to that,’ he warned her.

He unbuttoned the top of her skirt and worked it down over her hips. It dropped 
around her ankles and she kicked off her high heels.

Her bikini panties were of white satin with a little heart-shaped cut-out of 
lacework in the front. In the mirror he could see the shadowy haze of her pubes 
through the lace. He ran his fingertips lightly over the satin, and she 
whispered breathlessly, ‘You are not teasing me; you are torturing me.’

‘No more torture,’ he promised and pulled open the elastic top of her 
panties, and ran his hand down under the satin. She moved her feet apart to 
allow him access.

‘She is so wonderfully lubricious,’ he murmured.

‘That’s just pussy’s way of saying hello and it’s so nice to meet you 
at last,’ she explained.

‘There is somebody else around here who also desperately wants to meet 
pussy,’ he said.

‘I know exactly who you mean,’ she replied. ‘He has been making his 
presence felt recently.’

‘He has no manners. Please forgive his pushy and thrusting behaviour.’

‘Pushy is good.’ She laughed. ‘Thrusting is even better. I think pussy 
would very much like to meet him. Do you mind if I make the introductions?’

‘Please do,’ he invited, and she turned in the circle of his arms to face 
him, and she kissed him. But at the same time she was drawing down the zipper 
of his trouser fly.

‘Goodness gracious me!’ she exclaimed suddenly.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘That was an exclamation of delight, not dismay. I knew he had to be large 
but I never thought he would be that big. My immediate problem now is that you 
are over-dressed, but I intend to fix that.’ With her one hand still deep 
into the opening of his fly and the other hand on his chest she forced him to 
reverse until he came up against the bed and he went over backwards onto the 
covers.

‘Stay like that,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t move!’ She knelt and unlaced 
his shoes and pulled off his socks. Then she grabbed the bottoms of his 
trousers and told him, ‘Lift your bum, chum!’

When he obeyed she whipped off his trousers with a flourish and then did the 
same with his underpants. She stood back brandishing his boxers over her head 
and giggling like a schoolgirl. ‘Look at you, sticking up in the air and 
making the place all untidy. No, don’t move! I’ll have him tucked away 
neatly before you can say Jack Flash!’

She flipped the boxers over her shoulder and placed her fists on her hips and 
studied him with her head cocked on one side.

‘Hey, there!’ Hector said after a while. ‘What are we waiting for?’

‘Oh, I am sorry. I think I must have been hypnotized there for a moment, like 
the bird by the cobra. He is not only large but really rather handsome into the 
bargain, you know?’ She hopped up onto the bed beside him, and swung one leg 
over him, straddling him. She busied herself for a moment and then she gasped, 
‘Oh my God, he fits in! I had serious doubts that it was possible.’

Their lovemaking was ebullient and joyful; mutually fulfilling after their long 
abstinence. Afterwards they clung together, their breath and their perspiration 
mingling. They talked, and then made love again. Long after midnight they fell 
asleep still conjoined.

In the dawn she woke first, but he felt her eyes on his face and he opened his.

‘I was so afraid,’ she said and hugged him fiercely. ‘I dreamed you had 
gone away again.’

‘That’s not going to happen, I promise you.’

It was mid-morning when Cynthia sent up their breakfast and they ate in their 
bathrobes. They had shared a bath and their bodies still glowed from love and 
hot water. As Jo poured the coffee she asked, ‘So what do we do now?’ The 
plural pronoun came naturally to her lips.

‘The time for talking is past, now we start moving.’

‘Where to?’

‘To Abu Zara for a start. I have to get the team assembled, briefed and 
focussed. You have to meet Catherine Cayla.’

‘Great plan! When can we leave?’

‘How soon can you be ready?’

‘I am ready already. I travel light, remember?’

‘You are a girl of infinite virtues.’

*

Agatha managed to book the last two available first-class seats on the Emirates 
flight out of Heathrow that same evening. Paddy and Nastiya met them at Abu 
Zara airport the next morning. They tried to conceal their fascinated curiosity 
when Jo walked out of the arrivals gate at Hector’s side.

Hector shook hands with Paddy and kissed both of Nastiya’s cheeks, and then 
he told them, ‘I want you two to meet Jo Stanley.’ Hector introduced her.

‘Ah so!’ said Nastiya as the ladies shook hands. ‘I haven’t seen that 
look on Hector’s face for a long time. Be careful of this one, Jo Stanley. 
Hector has got a big handful.’

‘I think my wife means rather that Hector is a big handful,’ Paddy 
explained.

‘So, a difference there is?’ Nastiya demanded.

Paddy drove them to Seascape Mansions and when they rode up in the elevator to 
the penthouse Paddy was lugging Jo’s heavy case. In the lobby the customary 
reception committee was gathered to greet Hector. Catherine Cayla recognized 
her father as he stepped out of the elevator and almost bounced herself out of 
Bonnie’s arms with glad cries of ‘Baba!’

‘Put her down, Bonnie,’ Hector ordered and then to Jo he said, ‘Just 
watch this.’ Catherine shot across the floor and tried to climb his leg. 
Hector picked her up and placed her on his hip, and turned to Jo. ‘Pretty 
impressive, don’t you think?’

‘I think she is simply gorgeous. May I hold her?’

‘She may wet you. If she does, take it as a sign of love. She pees on me all 
the time.’

‘I’ll take the risk.’ Jo held out her arms. Catherine regarded her 
solemnly for a moment, then made up her mind.

‘Man!’ she said and went willingly into Jo’s embrace.

‘Man?’ Hector asked incredulously. ‘Did she ever get that one wrong!’

‘It’s her new word.’ Bonnie rushed to the defence of her charge. ‘She 
calls everybody that she likes Man.’

Dave Imbiss came forward to greet Hector and as they shook hands Hector told 
him, ‘Things are breaking, Dave. I want you with Paddy and Nazzy in the 
cinema right away.’

Hector led his main team to the cinema. Jo carried Catherine with her, and 
Catherine took the opportunity to explore the inside of Jo’s nostrils with 
her finger.

When they were all settled Hector plugged the flash drive into the computer, 
and the first page of Jo’s novella flashed up on the screen.

‘“Karl Pieter Kurtmeyer: The Poisoned Seed”. What the hell this is, 
Hector?’ Nastiya demanded.

‘Read it, Nazzy. All of you read it. Jo and I are taking Catherine to the 
beach for a swim. We will be back before dark to answer your questions, and to 
start the ball rolling.’

*

When Hector and Jo returned they went directly to the cinema and Hector opened 
the door quietly. The three of them in the seats were so engrossed that for a 
while they did not realize the two of them were standing watching them.

Nastiya said, ‘Come on, Paddy. Read quicker. I want to find out the end.’ 
Then suddenly she realized that she was being watched and she twisted round on 
the bench.

‘Hector, is this the truth what is happening in the book, or just another bad 
joke of yours?’

‘It’s the truth, Nazzy. Even I would never joke about something like 
this.’

‘Our baby! Our little Cathy! First we must stop them, both of these animals, 
before they can do this to our baby.’

‘That is why we are all here,’ Hector agreed. Both Paddy and Dave Imbiss 
were watching Hector. Their expressions were hard and cold.

‘This Kazundu Castle…’ Paddy cut in. ‘Tell us about it. Are Carl and 
Johnny Congo still holed up there?’

‘Have you finished reading Jo’s story?’ Hector avoided the question.

‘Not yet,’ Paddy admitted. ‘Just a few pages to go.’

‘Finish it. Jo and I are going to take a shower to get off the sea salt and 
sand. We will be back very shortly. In the meantime ring through to the 
kitchen, get Chef to rustle up a mess of food and a couple of gallons of 
coffee. We are going to be up late tonight.’

Half an hour later when they returned to the cinema they found an array of 
enormous silver platters heaped with sandwiches on the rostrum table. The room 
was redolent of the coffee in the silver urn.

‘Have you finished reading the whole story?’ Hector demanded of Paddy as 
they stood around the table wolfing sandwiches and swilling coffee.

‘It’s pretty fierce stuff,’ Paddy said.

As soon as they had finished eating and the plates were cleared away, Paddy 
locked the door, and they settled back in the tiered seats. Jo fussed with the 
projector, connecting her laptop computer to it and focussing the beam on the 
screen on the back wall of the auditorium. Hector prowled back and forth across 
the stage.

‘Okay, people. We all know now why we are going in.’ There was a murmur of 
assent. ‘This is a hunt-and-kill mission. No questions asked and no prisoners 
taken. We are going in to cancel Carl Bannock and Johnny Congo. We go in fast 
and come out just as fast. Are we all clear on that?’ Again there was tacit 
agreement.

‘Paddy has already asked the first question. Are the targets still in the 
castle on the hill? The answer is that as of forty minutes ago they were 
there.’

All three of them looked dubious, and Paddy spoke on their behalf. ‘Forty 
minutes ago? That’s pretty fast. The castle is almost three thousand miles 
from where we are now, so how can you be so sure so quickly? Come on, Hector, 
you don’t expect us to believe in your new supernatural powers.’

‘Jo is running a surveillance asset named Emma Purdom. She phoned in forty 
minutes ago while we were returning from the beach; she asked the question. The 
answer is that Carl and Johnny are still in the castle.’

They all turned and looked at Jo with dawning respect.

‘Jo set up this asset?’ Nastiya demanded.

‘Jo found it and turned it on,’ Hector confirmed.

‘Just a pretty decoration your new lady isn’t,’ Nastiya said. ‘Welcome 
to the team, Jo Stanley,’ and Jo looked up from the projector and smiled her 
thanks.

‘Hey, Jo! You have impressed Nazzy. That’s not easy to do,’ Hector told 
her. ‘Are you ready to run your little show for us?’

‘All set,’ Jo replied. ‘Give me the word.’

‘Hold on a moment, please,’ Hector said and then he turned to the others. 
‘First off, we need to make sure that you are able to identify the targets on 
sight and to recognize the sound of their voices. Jo is going to start with 
Carl Bannock. You know a great deal about Carl from Jo’s story. So just to 
recap, then. Carl is an academic; a product of a good prep school and 
Princeton. He is smart and tricky. He is a financial genius. He is 
good-looking, polished and suave. He is bisexual and kinky. In particular he is 
a pathological sadist and a paedophile. He is a psychopath: no conscience; no 
pity and no remorse. He is a megalomaniac. Only one thing matters to Carl 
Bannock and that is Carl Bannock. Always bear in mind what he did to his own 
mother and sisters. You know what his plans are for Catherine Cayla.’

The room went suddenly tense at the reference to their child, and Nastiya’s 
eyes were cold blue slits. Hector looked back at Jo. ‘Thank you, Jo. You can 
start the show now.’

She dimmed the overhead lights and started the projector. The tape that she had 
prepared ran for a little under ten minutes. It began with footage from the 
Bannock family archives that Ronnie Bunter had taken from his files. It showed 
Carl as a Princeton undergraduate. This was followed by footage of Carl 
running, walking and playing golf and tennis so they could study his movements. 
Then there were short clips of Carl addressing the shareholders at the annual 
general meeting of the Bannock Oil Corporation, being interviewed on TV and in 
conversation with his friends. From there it cut to the courthouse scene of 
Carl’s trial with him weeping and pleading for forgiveness. It ended with a 
few short clips from the concealed surveillance cameras in the castle on the 
hill. Emma Purdom had spliced these together for Jo. These were mostly clips of 
Carl and Johnny in conversation, but included brief and graphic scenes of Carl 
indulging in sexual congress with Johnny Congo and various other male, female 
and transvestite partners.

When the tape ended and Jo turned the lights up, Hector said, ‘Well, now you 
should all be able to recognize Carl Bannock even from a distance or if he is 
wearing a disguise, or if he is without pants. Do you have any questions?’

‘He is a snake, a poisonous snake,’ Nastiya said. ‘He is disgusting. He 
is the most repulsive thing I have ever seen.’

‘That is not a question, Nazzy.’

‘Okay, here is my question,’ Nastiya agreed. ‘Do we cancel him as soon as 
we can get a bead on him, or do we grab him so you can talk to him first?’

‘Use your discretion, Nazzy. If there is the slightest chance that he is 
about to get clean away then take him down, and shoot to kill. However, if you 
can grab him, then I would be extremely grateful if you could bring him to me 
for a short farewell chat.’

‘Hazel was a fine lady and her daughter is adorable. I want to be there when 
you are pointing out to Carl Bannock the error of his ways,’ Paddy said 
without a smile.

‘Are there any more questions or comments?’ Hector looked around. ‘If not 
we can go on to consider Johnny Congo. Here is another interesting and unusual 
subject.’

‘I want to have a good look at this one,’ Nastiya spoke up. ‘I want to 
make up my mind which one of them I hate the most. I want they should no more 
think about messing with our baby.’

‘Jo, you heard the lady. Please, can you show Johnny Congo to us?’

The opening sequence was of Johnny Congo as a US Marine sergeant being 
decorated with the Silver Star for valour in the Mekong River delta of Vietnam 
by his commanding general, while his company paraded behind them.

‘No doubt about it that Congo is completely fearless,’ Hector commented. 
‘He did two tours of duty in the US Marines. As you see he was decorated for 
courage and received an honourable discharge from the military with the rank of 
sergeant major. When he returned to civilian life he turned to the only role 
for which he was truly qualified and which gave him real pleasure; this was 
killing people. He became a hired gun; professional hit man. Like Carl, he is a 
psychopath and a sadist. Unlike Carl, he is a foul-mouthed brute, but do not 
for one moment underestimate him. He is possessed of innate animal cunning. You 
all know a great deal about him from Jo’s descriptions. But I am going to 
remind you of some of the most important things to remember about him. Johnny 
has an omnivorous sexual appetite. Carl is his long-term sexual partner but the 
two of them copulate with all and sundry. Johnny Congo is immensely physically 
powerful and a fearsome adversary. Like a mad dog he should be shot at a 
distance, and not engaged at close quarters.’

The tape of Johnny ended with sequences put together by Emma Purdom from the 
hidden cameras in the castle on the hill. When the screen went blank and Jo 
turned up the lights Hector went on. ‘Okay, you have all had a good look at 
our quarry. Now Jo will show you the hunting ground. We are expecting to find 
Johnny and Carl in or close to the castle and we might have to hunt them down 
within the walls. The castle is a large and rambling building. It is over three 
hundred years old and was built by Arabic stonemasons for the Sultan of Oman. 
It is a sprawling warren of hundreds of rooms. From the cellars and dungeons 
below to the towers and minarets on high it is a maze in which a stranger can 
very soon become completely lost. Jo will begin with photographs of the 
exterior.’

These photographs were all taken by professionals and were impressive. The 
backdrops of the lake and forest-covered mountains were magnificent. Jo ran 
through them quickly.

‘Okay, that’s the tourist commercial, but now we have something many times 
more valuable. Jo has managed to get her hands on up-to-date architects’ 
drawings and blueprints of the castle interior.’

The first plan flashed up on the screen. It showed the layout of the dungeons 
beneath the castle walls.

Paddy became so excited that he pounded his knee with his fist. ‘This is 
better than a winning lottery ticket. I am forced to admit that I was not very 
happy with the idea of following up blind through a labyrinth in which we could 
run into an ambush at every turn.’

‘Where on earth did you get these from, Jo?’ Dave Imbiss was as delighted 
as Paddy. ‘You have probably saved our lives. I mean that literally.’

‘Just remember what Maggie Thatcher said: when the going gets really tough 
send a woman in to do the job.’ Nastiya joined in the chorus of approval. 
‘Luckily you men have now got another female on the team.’

Hector raised his voice to regain their attention. ‘Jo has prepared a 
separate set of blueprints for each of you.’ He glanced down at the notebook 
he was holding open in his left hand. ‘Okay, so we now know our targets, and 
we know where we expect to find them. Now we must decide on how we are going to 
get into Kazundu. This is a tricky one. It’s not an easy country to reach.’ 
He nodded at Jo. She manipulated the projector to display a large-scale map of 
the area on the screen. Hector went on speaking.

‘To the east of it lies Lake Tanganyika, like a gigantic moat. It’s over 
thirty miles wide. Crossing it by some kind of vessel from the Tanzanian side 
is not really an inviting option. There’s a saying: “Africa is an empty 
land with a pair of eyes watching from behind every bush”. Johnny Congo is 
sure to have agents on the Tanzanian side. He would know we were coming before 
we pushed off from the eastern shore, and we would have to land on the 
Kazundian side of the lake under fire.’

‘Can we go in from the west, through the Democratic Republic of the Congo?’ 
Dave Imbiss asked, and Hector shook his head.

‘That would mean an approach march of at least five hundred miles through 
dense jungle and across large rivers. There are virtually no roads. The tribal 
warlords who control that part of the country are all Johnny’s staunch 
friends and business allies. He is the sales outlet for their conflict 
minerals. We wouldn’t get very far.’

‘So, it seems the only way in is by air. We will have to parachute in. 
That’s no problem, then.’ Paddy shrugged.

‘Good Irish thinking,’ Hector commended him. ‘That’s great for the 
entry. But how do we exit after we have done the job? We have already heard 
that it would be impossible to get out of Kazundu on foot.’

‘The drop plane would land to pick us up,’ said Paddy, defending his ideas. 
‘The same way Johnny did it originally.’

‘Johnny wasn’t on a hunt-and-kill raid, as we will be. He did not have to 
get control of the airport to have an escape route. He was there to waste 
Justin and take up permanent residence,’ Hector pointed out. ‘Anyway, this 
is a different situation. King Justin’s army was a music-hall joke, a small 
bunch of palookas with no ammunition in rifles they didn’t know how to shoot. 
Now Johnny’s gang is made up of well-equipped men who he has hand-picked and 
trained with the help of Sam Ngewenyama. Both Johnny and Sam are military 
veterans. We can only land forty or fifty men at a time. Andrew Moorcroft, who 
was on the ground in Kazundu, estimates that Johnny has a couple of hundred 
trained men. We are up against pros; not a single palooka amongst them. What is 
more, we will be heavily outnumbered.’

‘Shit!’ Dave Imbiss said quietly but vehemently.

‘Indeed,’ Hector agreed. ‘A big smelly lump of it. Andrew has also told 
us that Johnny Congo is fully aware that the airfield is his Achilles heel. He 
exploited it himself to get his men in. So what he has done is build a heavily 
sandbagged redoubt at each end of the runway. Set in embrasures in the walls 
are batteries of fifty-calibre heavy machine guns. No uninvited or unwelcome 
aircraft can land or take off without being raked by MG fire from both fore and 
aft, even before its wheels touch or leave the ground.’

They considered the proposition with expressions of cold distaste, until Jo 
Stanley broke the silence at last. ‘Unless, of course, it is Carl’s own 
Antonov Condor,’ Jo said gently.

‘Of course!’ Hector agreed dismissively. ‘But we are not going to be in 
his Condor, are we?’

‘No, we are not,’ Jo agreed demurely. ‘Unless, of course, you hijack it 
for us.’

A solemn silence followed this statement. Nastiya broke it with a whoop of 
laughter. ‘Look at their faces, Jo. They have run fresh out of smart-arse 
masculine replies. Come on, boys. What have you got to say to the lady?’

‘Goodness gracious me, Jo Stanley!’ Hector shook his head in mock 
disbelief. ‘I knew you were bright, but I didn’t realize that you are 
bright enough to light up the sky.’

‘Hector Cross!’ Jo tried to keep a straight face as she replied. ‘Don’t 
you dare hijack my terms of speech. Why don’t you rather go and hijack an 
aircraft?’

*

It took two more days of intensive planning before Hector was satisfied with 
the logistics for the assault on Kazundu.

‘The Condor will only be able to carry a safe limit of eighty-four fully 
equipped men and sufficient fuel for a round flight from Abu Zara to Kazundu 
and return,’ Hector had decided. ‘I estimate we will need a force of around 
fifty. What is the present strength of Cross Bow Security, Paddy? How many men 
can we field, right now?’

‘We are short of about fifteen or so,’ Paddy admitted, and glanced across 
at Dave Imbiss. ‘Am I right, Davie?’

‘Here in Abu Zara we are shy of sixteen men. But I can fly reinforcements in 
from our other oilfields in South America and Asia. Give me five or six days, 
and I can have the full complement assembled and ready to go on the airstrip of 
the Zara Number Thirteen concession.’

‘Get cracking right away, Dave,’ Hector ordered him, and then turned back 
to the others. ‘Once we have landed at Kazundu airport and overwhelmed the 
men in the two forts that guard it, we will have control. We will leave the 
Condor under the protection of the guns in the northern fort. That is the one 
closest to the castle on the hill.’

‘It’s not a good idea to park it in the open,’ Paddy advised. ‘There is 
going to be a lot of incendiary bullets and shrapnel flying about. Just a 
single hit from one of those and the Condor goes up. Boom!’

‘No!’ Hector held up his hand. ‘I don’t have pictures of it, but Emma 
Purdom has recorded conversation of Carl and Johnny discussing the building of 
some type of laager to protect the Condor when it is on the ground. It seems as 
though the floor of the bunker is well below ground level with an entry ramp at 
each end. The sides of the bunker are screened by walls of sandbags. Once the 
Condor taxies down the ramp, it is immune from small arms and RPG fire. Only 
problem is that this laager is situated well away from the main buildings where 
we will be disembarking. Our pilot will only be able to get the Condor under 
cover when we are clear.’

He looked around at their faces. ‘Any more questions?’ They shook their 
heads, and Hector went on. ‘I am assuming that we will have to go after our 
targets in the castle. I am going to leave twelve men to hold each of the forts 
on the airfield. Their firepower will be enhanced by the captured heavy machine 
guns that Johnny Congo has mounted there. I am going to leave Dave in command 
of these contingents to cover and protect the airfield from counterattack.’

At this stage Hector was presented with an unforeseen problem. It had never 
occurred to him that Jo Stanley would be any part of the strike team. She was 
not a trained warrior like the others. To his mind Jo’s place would be in the 
safety of Abu Zara, possibly helping Bonnie to take care of Catherine Cayla. 
Now suddenly Jo spoke out in a stronger and more assertive tone than she 
usually used to express herself.

‘The northern redoubt will also be the best place to site my comms post,’ 
she said.

There was a sudden and complete silence in the cinema. Every eye turned to Jo, 
and then immediately went back to Hector.

Nastiya was at the water fountain drawing a mug of cool water. She was as 
surprised as any of them by Jo’s outburst, but she recovered and went swiftly 
to stand at Jo’s side, before Hector had decided on his reply. Hector was 
left in no doubt whose side Nastiya was on.

‘I hadn’t thought about you coming with the strike team to Kazundu, Jo.’ 
Hector broke the pregnant silence carefully.

‘Well, you should think about it now.’ There was a tone in Jo’s voice 
that he had never heard until that moment. ‘I am arranging with Emma Purdom 
to set up special communications with her so that while the raid is in progress 
Emma will be able to keep us informed of everything that is happening in the 
castle. She will be shipping the equipment to me here in Abu Zara within the 
next few days. My specialized task will be to keep in constant contact with her 
in Houston. She is the only one of us who has eyes inside the castle. If either 
Johnny Congo or Carl Bannock goes to ground in there you will need Emma and me 
to provide you with live coverage of their movements.’

‘Jo has a diploma in electronic communications, on top of her law degree,’ 
Nastiya pointed out in the pause that followed Jo’s announcement.

‘How do you know that?’ Hector snapped at Nastiya. He was under attack on 
two fronts.

‘She told me when we were in the girls’ room a short while ago. She knows 
the layout of the castle better than any of us sitting here,’ Nastiya 
explained as if to a child. ‘If you want to know how I know that, well, think 
about who gave us the drawings of the place.’

‘Nazzy and Jo are making good sense,’ Paddy chimed in. ‘If one or both of 
those bastards gets away into the castle we will need all the edge we can 
muster. I for one will be happy to have Jo whispering in my ear to point out 
the way through the maze.’

‘You are being heavily outgunned, Heck.’ Dave Imbiss joined the discussion, 
‘A wise man would give up gracefully.’

‘Who is talking about wise men here?’ Nastiya asked ingenuously. ‘I 
thought we are talking about Hector Cross.’

‘Okay.’ Hector carried on as though he was totally deaf to this fusillade 
of repartee. ‘So, we are unanimously agreed on my suggestion that Jo goes 
along with us as field director of comms? Let’s move along, then.’

He paused to pour himself another mug of coffee and to recover his equilibrium. 
Then he flashed Jo a conciliatory grin, before he resumed. ‘We will use two 
kill teams, each comprising fifteen men. I will command the first and Paddy the 
second. Carl Bannock will be my prime target so my call sign will be 
“White”. Paddy, your prime target will be Johnny Congo, so it follows 
naturally that your call sign will be “Black”. Paddy, you can choose your 
number two.’

‘I’ll take Nastiya,’ Paddy said.

‘Why am I so surprised by your choice? I would have taken her if you had 
passed,’ Hector mused aloud. ‘I will have to settle for Paul Stowe as my 
number two.’

Hector’s former head keeper at Brandon Hall had swiftly worked his way into 
the top echelon at Cross Bow after Hector had given him the job. He had proven 
himself to be a highly trained fighting man. He was quick-witted, intelligent 
and utterly reliable; a good man to have beside you in any scrape.

‘By the way, where the hell is Paul?’ Hector looked at Paddy.

‘He is down on the old Number Twelve concession doing a routine inspection of 
the security there,’ Paddy replied.

‘Get him back here as soon as you can. He must be brought up to speed with 
our planning.’

Paddy grunted acquiescence and scribbled a note on his pad.

‘We will go over the details again later, but that covers just about 
everything in broad outline, with one notable exception,’ Hector summed up. 
‘How the hell do we get our hands on the Antonov Condor and who is going to 
fly it into Kazundu with fifty armed men on board without Johnny Congo and Carl 
Bannock knowing what we are up to?’ He paused to let them consider the 
question and then he went on. ‘I know who I want to fly it.’

There was a murmur of agreement from everybody except Jo, who looked puzzled. 
Hector addressed her directly.

‘Sorry, Jo.’ His expression softened. ‘There is no way you could know 
that I am referring to Bernie and Nella Vosloo. They are a couple of commercial 
pilots, a husband and wife team, who own and run a small air charter company 
operating all across Africa. They can fly anything with wings, and they 
aren’t too fussy about abiding strictly by aviation or any other laws. They 
did a tremendous job for us a while back.’

‘I know about the Vosloos, Hector,’ she corrected him mildly. ‘They are 
the people who flew you and your team into Somalia to rescue Hazel’s daughter 
from the pirate gang who had kidnapped her.’

‘How did you know that?’ Hector stared at her.

‘Hazel told Ronnie and me about them. The Bannock Family Trust had to pay the 
Vosloos’ bill, remember?’

‘You get to the winning post before I even start running!’ Hector conceded. 
‘Well then, perhaps you also know that the Vosloos operate only a single 
aircraft. It’s an ancient Hercules C-130. But the type is about as close to 
the Antonov Condor as it is possible to get, except for the possibility that 
the user manual is printed in Cyrillic. But Bernie and Nella don’t need a 
manual to fly a Russian copy of a Hercules.’

‘Sure of that we are, Heck? Will they take the job?’ Nastiya cut in.

‘In both respects sure of that we are indeed, Nazzy, if you can follow that 
convoluted bit of grammar. I sent Nella an email last night. My question to her 
was, “Can you fly an Antonov Condor? Love Hector”. I received her reply a 
few hours ago.’ He held up his iPhone so they were able to read the text on 
the screen.

‘This is the typical Nella Vosloo reply. “Can a peacock pee in the park? 
How far? How high? How much? Love Nella”.’ All of them chuckled. But Hector 
looked seriously at Jo.

‘Can your friend Emma hack into the Condor’s communications system, Jo?’

‘I told you, Emma is the original IT whizz-kid. No worries.’

‘Can she transmit a message to the pilots of the Condor as if it originated 
from Carl Bannock in Kazundu, and can she then intercept the reply from the 
Condor so that Carl Bannock is entirely unaware of the exchange?’

‘Of course she can. She placed her own bug in the Condor and she can play it 
like Little Walter played his harmonica.’

‘Who the hell is Little—’ Hector began then changed tack. ‘Scrub that 
question. Next question, I don’t suppose our Emma would be able use her bug 
to track the Condor in flight, and give us a fix on it when we ask her?’ 
Hector pressed Jo for more specifics.

‘Absolutely. There are no secrets safe from our girl,’ Jo responded without 
hesitation. ‘She can read the Condor’s instrument panel from three thousand 
miles away as though she was sitting in the pilot’s seat.’

‘Will you ask her for a breakdown of the Condor’s recent flights and the 
destinations of each flight, covering the last six months?’ He paused to 
consider and then went on. ‘Also please ask her for the personal details of 
the two Russian pilots. If at all possible I would like her to give us ID 
photographs of the two of them, perhaps even copies of their licences?’

‘I am sure she will be able to do all that for you.’

‘How long will it take her, do you think? Please impress upon her that it’s 
urgent.’

‘It won’t take long. Emma is totally switched on,’ Jo replied. ‘Even 
allowing for the different time zones it will only be a day or so. Emma sleeps 
with her computer on one pillow and her boyfriend’s head on the other. Given 
a choice, I think she prefers the computer.’

‘Okay.’ Hector stood up and stretched, and then he checked his wristwatch. 
‘It’s almost seven o’clock already. So we can take a break. Rumour has it 
that the chef has cooked up a feast for this evening, so you are all invited 
for eight p.m. That gives you an hour to primp and preen. See you all later.’

The dinner was heavy on the New Zealand green-lipped mussels, Maine lobster, 
bluefin tuna, gulf snapper and Chablis. Hector was the only one who stayed with 
the red burgundy.

Before they had finished eating they received proof that even Jo had 
underestimated Emma Purdom’s efficiency. At the same time as the dessert was 
being served, Emma’s response to Jo’s queries was brought through to the 
dining room by one of the radio operators from the Cross Bow communications 
centre. Hector opened the envelope and scanned the page quickly, before he 
looked up again at his dinner guests.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, hear the gospel according to St Emma. The Condor took 
off from Kazundu this morning at oh-eight-hundred hours GMT bound for Tehran in 
Iran with an unlisted cargo. Its ETA in Tehran is approximately one hour thirty 
minutes from now. On all its three previous visits to that city over the past 
six months the Condor remained in Tehran for twenty-four hours. Of course, that 
is in accord with DCA regulations to enable the pilots the stipulated rest 
period. After that it flew on to either Hong Kong or Russia. However, it always 
returns to Kazundu via Bangkok, where it takes on passengers. I am going to 
wager all my marbles on the Condor making the same homeward flight via Bangkok 
this time around. About now Carl and Johnny will be ready for some fresh Thai 
meat from the Bangkok flesh markets. According to St Emma, when in the Sin City 
the Russian pilots stay over at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for their requisite 
twenty-four-hour rest stop. So that gives Nastiya and Nella Vosloo a clear six 
days to get to Bangkok ahead of them and to be in the Oriental to meet the crew 
of the Condor when they arrive. Emma will send a message to the head pilot, 
purporting to emanate from Carl Bannock, to meet our two ladies and to ferry 
them down to Kazundu.’

*

Hector and Jo awoke early the next morning in each other’s arms. It had been 
a busy night and they were both in buoyant mood.

‘Do you mind if I invite Catherine Cayla to join us?’ Hector asked.

‘Oh, what fun! That’s a brilliant idea,’ Jo enthused and, very soon after 
his brief intercom call to Bonnie in the nursery, there was a discreet knock at 
the door.

‘Who is it?’ Hector demanded.

‘It’s just us,’ Bonnie’s voice sang back.

‘Door is open. Put the smaller part of us through it, please, Bonnie.’

The door opened a crack and Catherine was deposited on the threshold. She was 
dressed in an immaculate pink romper suit and there was a matching ribbon in 
her hair. She sat four-square and looked about the room with an expression of 
mystification.

‘This way, Cathy baby!’ Hector called to her, and it took her a moment to 
focus on the two heads in the rumpled bed. Then it registered and she emitted a 
joyous cry of ‘Baba’ and came to her feet. She tottered halfway across the 
wide floor before she also recognized Jo. She chortled with glee. ‘Man!’ 
she greeted her distinctly. ‘Good man!’

‘Oh my God!’ Jo exclaimed. ‘Is good a new word?’

‘And she used it for you, not me,’ Hector grumbled. ‘I am jealous.’

In her haste to reach the bed Catherine abandoned her upright gait and reverted 
to hands and knees. She completed the last few feet at a canter. Hector reached 
down and swept her up in his arms. She was warm and bouncy and she emitted a 
powerful aroma of baby talcum. They took turns to cuddle her as they talked.

‘Can you two girls be serious for a moment, Jo?’ Hector cut in at last.

‘Of course we can, what do you want to be serious about?’

‘Seeing as how I have made the decision that you are to be a member of the 
Kazundu strike team…’ he began, but Jo blew him a raspberry. Cathy thought 
that was very funny. She laughed delightedly, and imitated Jo, splattering both 
of them with a fine cloud of baby spittle.

‘Now that you two ladies have had your say, I shall continue,’ Hector 
resumed. ‘Jo, you and Emma Purdom will have to set up these communications 
you were boasting about pretty darn quickly. We may be in action in as soon as 
six or seven days’ time.’

‘You are absolutely right, my darling. I spoke to Emma as soon as I decided 
that I had to go with you. She knew exactly what we needed. She works on 
contract for the US Navy and she has developed for them a clever little gizmo 
that fits the bill exactly. It’s classified, of course, but nevertheless 
yesterday evening she despatched one of these to me by courier. It should 
arrive here today, or tomorrow at the latest.’

The promised gadget was delivered by DHL to Seascape Mansions early that same 
afternoon. In size and appearance it resembled a Hermès Birkin handbag. This 
had given Emma the inspiration to name it the Birkin. It weighed a shade over 
eight pounds.

Hector and Jo drove out into the desert with the Birkin and parked the Range 
Rover off the main highway, well concealed behind a rugged ridge of black 
ironstone.

As Jo switched on the power she explained, ‘The rechargeable battery has a 
life of seventy-two hours’ continuous operation. The antenna is built in. 
Here we go, it is acquiring satellite contact.’ She paused for a few seconds, 
and then she continued, ‘Bingo! Now it will automatically contact Emma’s 
station as its first option.’

Suddenly a young sweet girl’s voice spoke out clearly. ‘Echo Papa Seven 
Niner standing by.’

‘Those are Emma’s initials and her year of birth, but never tell her that I 
told you that. She will kill me,’ Jo explained before she pressed the 
transmit button. ‘This is Juliet Sierra. Hi there, Emma. This is just a radio 
check to let you know I have received your gift and I am online.’

‘Good to hear your voice, Jo sweetie.’

‘Are you still covering Little Boy and Big Boy?’ Hector gathered that they 
were referring to Carl and Johnny Congo.

‘Affirmative to that, Jo.’

‘We will be going operational probably within the next six days. I will give 
you a heads-up as soon as it happens. In the meantime, keep it warm. Over and 
out.’

‘I’ll keep it warm, if you help him to keep it hard. Give him my love,’ 
said Emma and she broke the contact.

‘She knows about you,’ Jo explained apologetically. ‘And she can be very 
rude.’

‘I gathered that.’ Hector smiled. ‘Now tell me what is so special about 
this Birkin. It looks very much run-of-the-mill stuff to me.’

‘First of all there is its size and weight; and its incredible range and 
reception in the most adverse conditions.’

‘Yes, you have just demonstrated those qualities, but still I am not sure 
what all the fuss is about.’

‘It will support up to ten additional listening posts. That means as long as 
you are within ten miles you and your team leaders can follow simultaneously 
all Emma’s transmissions to me on your in-ear headphones. This will leave 
your hands free to pick your noses or whatever else takes your fancy.’

‘That’s good,’ Hector agreed. ‘What else makes it unique?’

‘It is completely secure. Nobody can possibly hack in on our 
transmissions,’ she said, and Hector looked dubious.

‘How is that again?’

‘Did you notice the faint click every five seconds while Emma and I were 
transmitting?’ she asked.

‘Yes, now that you mention it. But I thought that was only static 
interference.’

‘You’ll hear no static on this set. It is modulated to be as clean as my 
mother’s kitchen.’ Hector smiled at the comparison, and she continued. 
‘What you heard was actually Emma’s radio changing its frequency. Every 
five seconds it makes a random change, and my set follows suit and makes the 
change to exactly the same frequency at precisely the same instant. There are 
nearly five thousand AM frequencies for our sets to choose from. No other 
unlinked set can keep pace with us.’

‘Now you have seriously impressed me, but what else, if anything, is so 
special about it?’

‘At ranges up to ten miles there is virtually nothing that can interfere with 
transmissions from our Birkin to your headphones. Do you have any idea how 
thick the walls of Kazundu Castle are?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing they are plenty thick,’ Hector 
said.

‘In places, especially down in the dungeons, they are as much as fifteen or 
twenty feet thick; and that is solid rock!’

‘Impressive,’ Hector agreed. ‘But go on and impress me a little more.’

‘Okay, if you were down in the palace dungeons hunting for Carl and Johnny, 
Emma in Houston would be able to watch them on her planted cameras; however, 
she would not be able to report the information to you. Because of the 
thickness of the castle walls the two of you would not have comms.’

‘That sucks,’ Hector agreed. ‘But I think I see where you are coming 
from.’

‘Let’s hear it from the lad. It’s your turn to impress me with how smart 
you are.’

‘I am in the Kazundu dungeon and I can’t speak to Emma, but I can speak to 
you because you are on the airfield at the foot of the hill, or maybe you are 
even up on the battlements of the fort. Emma sees what our two beauties, Carl 
and Johnny, are up to, so she tells you and you relay it on to me.’

‘You are just as smart as I hoped you were,’ Jo admitted. ‘So you see why 
this means that I have to come to Kazundu with you. You can’t leave me behind 
to sit on my hands here in Abu Zara.’

‘You are a scheming vixen, Jo Stanley!’ Hector told her sternly, and then 
he went on, ‘We will need in-ear headphones for each of our team leaders. We 
must be hands-free to use our weapons, if needs be.’

‘Emma has sent me ten sets of headphones in the same package as the 
Birkin.’ Jo opened the package and displayed them to him.

‘She certainly is a switched-on young lady,’ Hector conceded. ‘And I like 
the sound of her voice. She sounds rather cute.’

‘Just you forget it, buster,’ Jo told him sternly. ‘Emma is as ugly as an 
organ grinder’s monkey. Besides, any time you feel the urge, this little 
Birkin right here beside you will be delighted to oblige.’

*

Nastiya and Nella Vosloo made the journey to Bangkok on separate airlines. 
Nastiya was the first to arrive and Nella followed eight hours later on a 
flight from Nairobi in Kenya. They met in Nastiya’s suite in the Authors’ 
Wing of the Mandarin Oriental hotel overlooking the Chao Phraya river. They had 
both changed into their best cocktail gowns, and after they had embraced they 
stepped apart still holding hands and examined each other with affectionate 
interest.

‘You are looking so good, Nella. It seems like yesterday I last saw you,’ 
Nastiya told her.

‘And so are you! I love that dress. The colour suits you so well. Is it 
Prada?’

‘Yes, it’s Prada.’ Nastiya hugged her again. ‘Shall we have a 
nice-to-see-you drink? I found a bottle of good vodka in the minibar.’ She 
poured two measures, filled them with ice cubes and they saluted each other 
with the frosted glasses, then Nastiya took Nella’s arm and led her out onto 
the balcony.

‘I have checked the room.’ Nastiya dropped her voice. ‘I think that 
it’s clean. But it’s best we take no chances, and we talk out here. Do you 
know what we have to do?’

‘Yes, Hector has told me everything. He said you would have photographs of 
these other people we are taking over from.’ Nella worded it diplomatically.

Nastiya left her for a moment to fetch her bag from the sitting room and she 
closed the door behind her as she returned. They studied the photographs 
together.

‘This one is the captain,’ Nastiya explained. ‘His name is Yuri Volkov. 
In Russian Volkov means wolf. With a name like that his ancestors must have 
been aristocrats, before the revolution. When he was younger he flew MiG-29 
Fulcrums for the USSR.’

‘That’s their top fighter. Only the hot-shot Russian pilots get to fly 
them.’

‘Da,’ Nastiya agreed. ‘But now age and liquor have caught up with him, 
and he is no longer hot shot. His co-pilot is Roman Spartak. He also is old, 
but not as old as Yuri.’

Nella decided not to ask Nastiya for her definition of old. She had an uneasy 
suspicion that she might fall into that category. Instead she said, ‘When are 
we going to meet them?’

‘They checked into the hotel this morning. I spoke on the telephone to Yuri 
Volkov this afternoon just after you checked in. He has received the briefing 
that he believes was sent to him by Carl Bannock, and he is expecting our 
arrival. He and his second pilot are staying here in the hotel. I arranged with 
Yuri that we should meet them for a drink in the Bamboo Bar at seven thirty. 
That means we have an hour to go over our plans, to make certain we don’t 
make any mistakes,’ Nastiya told her.

At the arranged time the two women took the lift down to the Bamboo Bar.

‘Remember that we mustn’t recognize them,’ Nastiya warned Nella as they 
walked into the room that throbbed with the rhythm of a Thai jazz band. The two 
Russians were sitting on the imitation tiger-skin high stools at the long bar 
and both of them were watching the door. They reacted immediately as the pair 
appeared in the entrance to the bar.

‘They have spotted us.’ Nastiya spoke without moving her lips. ‘Emma 
Purdom sent them copies of our passports when she hacked into their comms. Here 
comes Yuri. He must have been a real hottie when he was younger.’

‘I am Yuri Volkov.’ The Russian bowed to the two women, then his eyes 
returned to Nastiya’s face. ‘You must be the one named Nastiya 
O’Brien,’ he greeted her in English. ‘That is a strange first name for an 
Irish girl.’ He held out his hand and Nastiya took it.

‘I was once Nastiya Voronova,’ she replied in Russian. ‘But I went and 
married an Irishman.’

‘Ah so! It is good to meet such a lovely lady from home!’ Yuri switched 
into their mother tongue.

‘You can call me Nastiya,’ she said, and then she reverted to English for 
the benefit of Nella. ‘This is my friend Nella Vosloo. She is a South African 
business lady.’

Yuri turned to Nella and shook her hand. ‘I hope you will forgive my English 
very bad.’

‘Your English is very good,’ Nella replied as she examined his 
once-handsome but now drink-raddled features.

‘Thank you, but is not true.’ Yuri turned back to Nastiya. ‘I have 
instructions from my owner to fly you to Kazundu to meet him.’

‘That is correct. We have special business with His Majesty King John,’ 
Nastiya agreed.

‘With your permission I present to you my colleague and co-pilot, Roman 
Spartak.’

Yuri introduced them and ordered vodka all round. They toasted each other and 
Yuri asked apologetically if he might be allowed to view the women’s 
documents so that he could compare them to the copies he had been sent by his 
employer. After he had matched their passports to the scans Yuri relaxed 
further and ordered more vodka. An hour later Nastiya asked the men to excuse 
them and she took Nella to the ladies’ room. As they repaired their make-up 
in the big mirror she asked tactfully, ‘Do you have any personal interest in 
either of our new friends, Nella?’

‘No thank you. Yuri is quite sweet. But I am happily married to a good man. I 
gave up playing those side games long ago.’

‘The same goes with me. Besides which we have a busy day tomorrow.’

They said goodnight to the pilots and they agreed to meet them again in the 
hotel lobby after breakfast the following morning.

When they came down to the lobby, Yuri had two of the hotel courtesy cars 
waiting at the entrance and they drove out to the Don Muang private jet 
terminal in convoy. There were fourteen other passengers waiting in the private 
lounge to board the Condor. They were all startlingly good-looking Thai girls. 
They were in high spirits, chattering and giggling, excited to be embarking on 
this adventure to Africa.

‘I don’t think they are all girls.’ Nastiya gave her opinion. ‘Carl 
must be giving full run to his peculiar tastes. But keep your voice down, and 
try to wipe that frown off your face.’

Yuri gathered up all his passengers and shepherded them through immigration and 
airport security, after which they were allowed to board the minibus that took 
them all out to the gigantic four-engined Antonov aircraft waiting on the 
hardstanding. They boarded her through the ramp at the rear of the fuselage.

A single African air hostess met them and led all the passengers forward 
through the empty cargo hold to the pressurized passenger compartment behind 
the galley and the flight deck. When all the passengers were seated in the 
cavernous compartment and strapped in, the hostess locked the airtight doors 
and demonstrated the emergency procedures. Meanwhile the pilots started the 
main engines and began to taxi to the head of the runway.

The Condor took off and climbed to cruising altitude and settled on course for 
Kazundu. Within a very short time the passengers lapsed into the torpor of 
long-distance flight as the Condor droned westwards at a little under 
five-hundred miles per hour.

An hour after take-off the hostess came back to where the two women were seated.

‘The captain invites you up to the cockpit to see how the plane is flown.’

Nastiya glanced at Nella, who nodded acquiescence. They left their seats and 
followed the hostess back up the aisle. Without making it obvious, both of them 
took full advantage of this opportunity to study the layout of the forward area 
of the fuselage and the cockpit. They spent a pleasant enough half-hour with 
the two Russians. Yuri tried his best to impress them with the specifications 
of the Condor. He even allowed Nella to sit in the command seat and to hold the 
controls. She giggled with feigned excitement, and Yuri was so encouraged that 
he placed his hand on her knee. She removed it firmly, and the two women 
returned to their seats in the passenger compartment.

‘You should be able to fly it now, after Yuri’s instructions,’ Nastiya 
teased her.

‘I think he wanted to give me the full course.’ Nella grinned, and reached 
into her bag for a paperback Stephen King novel.

Five hours later Nastiya surreptitiously switched on her hand-held GPS and 
confirmed that the position of the Condor was one hundred and fifty-two miles 
east of Male, the capital of the Maldives Republic in the Indian Ocean. She 
composed a single-code-word message and sent it to a one-off Hotmail address. 
This brief transmission was to alert Cross Bow Central that they were about to 
go operational.

Four minutes later she received the response and the order to proceed. This 
read simply ‘KYBO’. She smiled at another example of Hector’s boyish 
sense of humour. The acronym stood for ‘Keep Your Bowels Open’.

Nastiya leaned across the aisle and touch Nella’s arm. Nella opened her eyes, 
sat up straight and nodded at her. Nastiya unbuckled her safety belt, stood up 
and took her valise down from the overhead locker. Then she went up the aisle 
to the toilet between the galley and the flight deck. Behind the curtains that 
screened the forward area from the passenger cabin, the hostess was sitting in 
her jump seat in the galley reading a magazine. The door to the flight deck was 
hooked open, and through it Nastiya could see the backs of the pilots’ heads 
as they sat at the controls of the Condor. Nastiya grimaced when for the first 
time she noticed that Yuri had a pronounced bald patch on the back of his scalp 
over which he had slicked down a few wispy grey locks.

All three members of the Condor crew were relaxed; bored and off-guard. They 
had obviously flown hundreds of hours together on this route, and their 
security precautions were minimal to nonexistent.

The black hostess looked up and smiled at Nastiya. She returned the smile and 
went into the toilet. She locked the door and set her valise down on the floor. 
Then she unzipped and dropped her jeans and her panties around her ankles and 
lowered herself onto the seat. As Hector had reminded her with his coded text 
message, it was always a wise precaution to evacuate the bladder and bowels 
before going into action.

Still sitting, she leaned forward, placed her valise between her feet and 
opened it. From the bottom of the bag she took out a box of tampons. Carefully 
she removed four of the white cardboard applicator tubes from the box. In place 
of the advertised contents each tube contained one of the Hypnos knock-down 
hypodermic syringes that Dave Imbiss had provided for her. Nastiya had modified 
the inner pocket of her denim jacket by hand-sewing four slots into it. One of 
the Hypnos hypodermics fitted snugly into each slot, instantly ready to hand.

Nastiya packed away the tampon box and zipped her valise closed. Then she 
completed her ablutions and readjusted her clothing. She checked her make-up 
and her appearance in the mirror above the basin. She frowned at herself, and 
made a mental note to make an appointment to see her dermatologist for another 
course of Botox injections, just as soon as she returned to London. She liked 
to look her best even when she was going into combat. She flushed the toilet 
and opened the door.

The hostess looked up and smiled at her again. ‘There are some snacks, if you 
are hungry.’ She indicated the array of plates on the galley table.

‘Thank you so much.’ Nastiya set down her valise to free both her hands. 
She selected a single ripe grape from the display, slipped it into her mouth 
and with her tongue popped it against the roof of her mouth. She savoured the 
sweetness as she waited for the hostess to switch her attention back to her 
magazine. Then she took one of the Hypnos tubes from her inner pocket, flipped 
back the cover to expose the needle and turned back to the seated girl.

The hostess wore a short-sleeved blue uniform shirt. Her back was turned half 
away from Nastiya.

‘Please excuse me, miss.’ Nastiya spoke in a soothing and placating tone, 
as she gripped the girl’s shoulder lightly with her left hand. The hostess 
looked up in mild surprise as Nastiya slid the tip of the needle into her 
glossy black triceps. The needle was so sharp that its entry was painless. 
Nastiya squeezed the soft PVC tube and smiled into the girl’s eyes. She 
returned Nastiya’s smile, then her eyes glazed and her entire body melted 
into unconsciousness. Nastiya held her upright with one arm around her 
shoulders, and with the other hand she fastened the buckle of the girl’s 
shoulder straps to keep her from falling out of her seat and injuring herself.

Nastiya took a pace forward until she was able to see through the doorway into 
the flight deck. Both pilots were still in their seats. They were wearing bulky 
radio headphones and tropical short-sleeved cotton shirts. Roman, the co-pilot, 
was speaking into the hand-held radio mike. Nastiya heard him reporting the 
present position of the Condor to Male control in the Maldives, which now lay 
only fifty miles off the port wing.

Nastiya leaned forward to peer over Yuri’s head and to check the green light 
on the control panel which indicated that the Condor was flying on automatic 
pilot. The bulb was blinking reassuringly green. She waited for Roman to finish 
his radio transmission and cradle his hand-held mike.

Behind her back Nastiya held one of the Hypnos syringes in each hand. She 
flicked open the protective covers and exposed the needles. She stepped quietly 
through the door into the cockpit. The two Russians were oblivious to her 
presence. She came up behind them and simultaneously slapped a hand on each of 
their shoulders. The tiny needles slipped through cloth and skin without a 
check, and she shot the anaesthetic into them.

Both of the men had time to look around and recognize her. Yuri opened his 
mouth to speak, but before he could do so he sagged forward onto his shoulder 
straps. Roman followed him into oblivion a few seconds later. Quickly Nastiya 
checked to make certain that they were safely restrained, with no impediment to 
their breathing. Then she leaned over Roman’s shoulder to reach the controls 
of the radio and she switched it off. Satisfied at last, she went back to the 
entrance of the passenger compartment and peered through the slit in the 
curtains. All the Thai passengers were asleep. However, Nella Vosloo was 
sitting forward in her seat, alert for her summons. Nastiya beckoned her with a 
jerk of the head, and Nella stood up and came up the aisle to join her.

In the cockpit Nella helped Nastiya to lift the two pilots out of their seats 
and lay them on the deck. From her valise Nastiya brought out a pack of 
heavy-duty PVC cable ties. With these they pinioned the pilots’ arms and 
legs. Then they dragged them one at a time back into the galley.

‘How long will the effects of the drug take to wear off?’ Nella asked 
quietly.

‘According to Dave Imbiss, they should be out for about three or four hours, 
depending on their individual resistance to the drug. But if we need them awake 
before then Dave has given me an antidote that will wake them up at once,’ 
Nastiya told her and then went on briskly, ‘We must separate the pilots. If 
we leave them together, when they wake up they will certainly try to plot some 
way to make trouble for us.’

They dragged Yuri into the small storage compartment between the toilet and the 
galley. They propped him in a sitting position on the deck, with his back 
against the storage racks. They used more cable ties to fasten him securely to 
the steel framework of the racks. Then they fixed a strip of duct tape over his 
mouth as a gag. They locked the door when they left him.

Next, they went back and dragged Roman into the toilet. They sat him on the 
floor and fastened his wrists to the grab-handles on the wall above his head. 
Then they gagged him as they had done with Yuri. Nella found the toilet key in 
the pocket of the hostess’s apron. She locked the door and posted an ‘Out 
of Order’ sign on it.

They left the hostess still strapped to her jump seat, but they gagged her 
also, and used more cable ties to secure her hands behind her back so that she 
would be unable reach the release buckle of her safety belt. Then they drew the 
curtain over her alcove so that none of the Thai passengers might find her and 
raise a commotion.

Once all three crew members were immobilized Nastiya left Nella to take command 
of the aircraft while she returned to her seat in the passenger cabin from 
where she could cast a motherly eye over the other passengers to make certain 
that none of them wandered up the aisle into the forward area of the aircraft 
to use the toilet in which Roman was sleeping.

Nella went forward and locked herself into the flight deck. Then she took her 
place in Yuri’s command seat. She punched into the satnav the coordinates of 
the airstrip at the Bannock Oil drilling installation on the Zara No. 13 
concession. Then she disengaged the autopilot and assumed manual control of the 
Condor. She eased her onto a new heading of 325 degrees magnetic. The change of 
course was so gentle that it would not alarm any of the dozing passengers in 
the cabin.

Much later, with only an hour still to run before they reached their 
destination, Yuri Volkov regained consciousness. He began kicking the bulkhead 
with both feet still cabled together, and bellowing into his gag like a buffalo 
bull bogged down in a swamp. Nastiya hurried forward to the tiny luggage 
compartment and squatted in front of him.

‘Please behave yourself and keep quiet, Yuri.’ She spoke to him reasonably 
in Russian. ‘You are disturbing the other passengers.’ She showed him 
another of the Hypnos syringes. ‘You seem to be a very nice and sensible man 
and I don’t want to be forced to stick one more of these needles into you.’ 
Yuri stopped shouting. ‘Thank you.’ Nastiya gave him a warm smile. ‘I 
assure you that we have no quarrel with you. I have been told by my boss that 
if you cooperate you will very soon be released unharmed. In addition you will 
be paid one year’s salary as a compensation for the inconvenience you have 
suffered, and another year’s salary for the loss of your present employment. 
This goes equally for both Roman and your air hostess. You can tell them that 
when you have the opportunity.’ She paused to let him consider what she had 
said, and then she continued, ‘If you promise not to make any more trouble I 
will remove your gag so we can talk. But you know what will happen if you start 
shouting again. Nod your head if you understand and agree.’

Yuri nodded vigorously. When she ripped away the tape, Yuri opened and wriggled 
his jaws to ease them and restore the circulation. As the same time he was 
studying Nastiya’s face. ‘Ah so!’ he burst out at last in Russian. ‘Now 
I understand what you are up to. You are going after those two pieces of shit 
in Kazundu, aren’t you?’ He used the noun gavno, which is a particularly 
offensive Russian word for excrement.

‘Didn’t your mother warn you not to talk like that in front of a lady?’ 
Nastiya reprimanded him primly. ‘Anyway, I have no idea who you are referring 
to in such derogatory terms.’

‘Chepukha! Not half, you don’t.’ Yuri grinned at her. ‘I am talking 
about his Majesty King John and his prime minister, Carl Bannock. You can do me 
a big favour and give them a good one from me when you catch up with those two 
animals.’

Nastiya heard him out, and then she regarded him evenly, before she asked, 
‘They have treated you badly, these two gentlemen?’

‘Gentlemen they are not,’ Yuri corrected her passionately. ‘They are 
criminal scum. They treat all of us like shit. They mock and insult me every 
time they speak to me. They are always cheating me out of my fair wages.’ He 
paused to catch his breath, and to rein in his anger. ‘They are perverted 
animals. If I told you what they are going to do to those passengers in the 
back of this plane you would vomit.’

‘Tell me!’ Nastiya invited him.

‘They are going to shoot them full of alcohol and drugs, and then force them 
to perform all sorts of filthy and disgusting tricks. When they are tired of 
them they will dump them, and fly in another load to break and abuse. I hate 
both those bastards. I would love to see them go down in flames, I tell you!’

‘Why didn’t you do something about it yourself?’ she asked mildly, and 
Yuri looked abashed.

‘I thought about it often, but they have got so much power and money. What 
could an old down-and-outer like me do? I need to eat. They are the only ones 
who would take me on.’

She saw his obvious distress and changed her tone. ‘Now that we have become 
friends and we understand and trust each other, perhaps you will tell me what 
your radio procedures are on approach to Kazundu airfield,’ Nastiya suggested 
and gave him one of her most seductive smiles.

Yuri chuckled. ‘I will help you in any way I possibly can, my darling. As I 
cross the lake inbound I call the castle on 121.975 megahertz. Then that greasy 
bastard, Bannock, rants at me for a while. He treats me like his verbal punch 
bag. After that he gives me clearance, and I overfly the airfield at five 
hundred feet to check the wind direction from the windsock. I don’t trust 
that slimy swine not to give me deliberate misinformation. Then I turn 
downwind, cross wind and finals.’

‘Do you give a specific call sign to identify yourself?’

‘No, Carl Bannock recognizes my voice. He says I speak English like an 
elephant letting off wet farts.’

‘What would happen if you came in to land without clearance?’

‘I don’t know. I have never tried it. He would probably shoot the living 
daylights out of me with those fifty-calibre cannons they have mounted at each 
end of the runway.’

‘Thank you, Yuri.’ She stood up.

‘Now that we are friends and we understand and trust each other, how about 
you cut these things off my wrists?’ he pleaded.

‘We don’t understand and trust each other that much,’ Nastiya told him 
regretfully.

‘Well, at least you could get me something to drink,’ he suggested. 
‘Whatever that drug was you hit me with, it has made me very thirsty.’

‘I’ll get you a glass of water,’ she said.

‘I was not thinking about water.’ Yuri’s tone was aggrieved and she 
laughed and went to the galley and returned with a bottle of vodka.

‘You are the most beautiful and kindest woman I have ever met, but I can’t 
drink unless you free my hands.’

‘Yes, I am truly beautiful and kind,’ Nastiya agreed. ‘But I’m not 
stupid.’ She carried a drinking straw in her other hand, and she squatted 
beside him and placed one end of it between his lips. Then she dipped the other 
end into the neck of the bottle. Yuri sucked and swallowed several mouthfuls 
before she removed the straw from his mouth to allow him to breathe.

‘You aren’t really married, are you?’ he demanded in a voice still hoarse 
and ragged from the raw spirit.

‘Didn’t you notice this?’ She flirted her ring in front of his eyes.

‘Da, I saw it, but I hoped that it was just camouflage, to keep the wolves 
away,’ Yuri told her seriously. ‘Please tell me that you love me as much as 
I love you, Nazzy darling.’

Nastiya threw back her head and laughed delightedly. ‘Poor Yuri Volkov! You 
have missed your vocation. You could get a job in the Moscow State Circus. They 
always need clowns,’ she said. ‘Here is your reward for trying so hard.’ 
She stuck the drinking straw back in his mouth.

*

To maintain radio silence, Nella overflew the Zara No. 13 airfield at low level 
to announce their arrival. By the time she had come around, lined up with the 
runway and lowered the undercarriage, Paddy O’Brien had paraded the entire 
Cross Bow contingent on the perimeter to welcome the Condor.

Nella settled the monstrous aircraft onto the landing strip as lightly as a 
virgin’s kiss. Then she taxied back and with a burst of the port engines and 
opposite wheel brakes pirouetted the gigantic Condor like a ballerina onto the 
hardstanding, before she dropped the rear loading ramp.

Finally, she shut down all four engines and in the sudden silence Paddy’s men 
burst out cheering and threw their caps high in the air as they swarmed forward 
to the foot of the loading ramp to welcome the two heroines.

Paddy O’Brien was the first man up the ramp to find Nastiya. Bernie Vosloo 
was only two paces behind him. The two men embraced their wives with delight 
and relief. The confused and terrified Thai prostitutes were shepherded down 
the ramp and in an almost avuncular manner loaded into the back of a waiting 
truck.

‘You have your orders, Sergeant,’ Hector warned the non-com he had put in 
charge of their guard detail. ‘If any one of your men interferes with these 
kids, I’ll personally break his balls.’

‘I’ll see to it they behave themselves, sir.’ The sergeant saluted, but 
he looked wistfully at some of the pretty prisoners before his men whisked them 
away, still wailing and weeping, to the detention block where they would be 
placed securely behind bars to keep them out of sight and mind of the fifty or 
so testosterone-charged young rams that made up the Cross Bow task force. In a 
fight Hector would not hesitate to place his life in the hands of his boys, but 
when it came to libidos he would trust none of them even if they were trussed 
up in a chastity belt.

Hector turned his attention to Paddy and Nastiya, who were still locked in each 
other’s embrace. ‘When you come up for air, Nazzy, I would like a word with 
you.’

She looked at him over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Go ahead, Hector. I can do 
two things at once. Talk to me; I am listening.’

‘What have you done with the Condor crew?’

Nastiya gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Why is always you must pick the 
wrong time, Hector Cross? Okay, come with me. I show you. But first I tell you 
that, for money, Yuri Volkov the head pilot will cooperate. He has been badly 
treated by Johnny and Carl and he strongly disapproves of their sexual 
orientation.’

The three crew members of the Condor willingly gave Hector their parole, and he 
ordered the restraining cable ties to be removed from their wrists and ankles. 
There was already a dearth of accommodation for the assembled task force. 
However, the Russian pilots were allocated a tent of their own. It was highly 
unlikely that they would attempt to escape. They had no inkling of where they 
were, or in which direction or at what distance their freedom lay. 
Nevertheless, Hector posted a pair of sentries to ensure that they honoured 
their promise.

Hector was not prepared to take the same chance with the nubile black air 
hostess. He wanted her also to be kept out of striking distance of any of his 
men. He billeted her in a room in the main block, adjoining Paddy and 
Nastiya’s spartan accommodation, where the Cross Bow troops would venture at 
their peril.

Before Yuri Volkov was escorted to his tent Hector walked with him out into the 
desert. Out of earshot of his colleagues, Hector negotiated an agreement with 
Yuri for his full cooperation. Then Hector took him back to the communications 
room and placed him in front of the radio set. He handed Yuri a typed sheet on 
which was set out exactly what he had to relay to Carl in Kazundu. Then Hector 
sat beside him with his hand on the breaker switch, poised to kill the 
transmission if Yuri deviated in any detail from the script in front of him.

It took almost twenty minutes to raise the communication centre in the throne 
room of Kazundu Castle, and there was another delay while Carl Bannock was 
summoned by the duty officer.

He came on the line at last. ‘Where the hell are you, Volkov? You are almost 
six hours overdue, you stupid asshole.’

‘I am very sorry, sir.’ Yuri’s tone was cringing and obsequious. ‘We 
had a total radio failure five hours out from Bangkok, and I was forced to 
divert to the airport at Abu Zara City to effect repairs.’

‘Are you out of your dense skull? Your nearest airport was Male in the 
Maldives, or even Sri Lanka or Mumbai,’ Carl Bannock raged with frustration. 
‘Why did you wander so far off course, you idiot?’

‘Mr Bannock, sir, Abu Zara is the nearest centre in Asia or the Middle East 
that has spares for our Swiss EX12 AYRAN Transistor.’ Yuri knew he could 
baffle Carl with technical jargon.

There was a brief silence on the air and then Carl snarled the question. 
‘What is your estimated delay, Volkov, you prick?’

‘In excess of seventy-two hours if you want me to wait for the repairs to the 
radio, sir. That doesn’t include actual flying time.’

‘Did you pick up those passengers from Bangkok?’ Carl went off at a tangent.

‘Yes, sir, Mr Bannock! They are all here with me.’

Hector imagined Carl steaming with lust to get his hands on his little sex 
toys. Yuri was grinning as he also savoured the moment, but he continued in a 
tone of voice both contrite and eager to please. ‘I can fly without radio and 
be in Kazundu in less than ten hours, if you give the word, Mr Bannock, sir. 
Naturally I will not be able to initiate the usual radio procedure on my 
approach to Kazundu.’

‘Control will never let you take off from Abu Zara without radio comms, you 
stupid old bugger!’

‘I can arrange it, sir. I have a contact in control, but it will cost some 
baksheesh. He is asking one thousand dollars US.’

‘Okay, Yuri Volkov, pay him and then get your unsavoury Russian buttocks down 
here pronto, do you hear me? I should fire you, you doddering old fart.’ The 
radio contact was cut abruptly.

‘Now I understand why you love and respect your boss so heartily, Yuri.’ 
Hector stood up and patted his shoulder. ‘You did a good job of convincing 
him. I want you and your crew to confine yourself to this base until I return 
from this mission. Then I will pay you the amount we have agreed on. After that 
I will fly all three of you to Dubai to catch a flight to wherever in the world 
you want to disappear. I might even pay for your air tickets.’

*

Hector and Paddy had planned the complicated loading schedules of the Condor 
carefully. Those troops and equipment that were to be first out on the Kazundu 
airfield had to be last into the Condor here at Zara No. 13.

Even so it took almost two hours from when Hector made the ‘Go’ decision to 
when Bernie and Nella Vosloo between them lifted the heavily loaded Condor’s 
wheels off the airstrip and she roared up into the moonlit sky. At fifteen 
hundred feet above the desert Bernie brought her around onto a south-westerly 
heading, to cut across the Great Horn of Africa and from there to head a touch 
west of south for Lake Tanganyika and the kingdom of Kazundu on its western 
shore.

Hector had timed the take-off carefully to ensure their arrival over Kazundu an 
hour after sunrise. It was a compromise. If they arrived as soon as there was 
sufficient daylight for a safe landing, then it was highly likely that Johnny 
and Carl would not leave their beds to come down to the airstrip to greet their 
Thai guests. The best scenario was to have the two targets standing on the 
airstrip when the tail ramp of the Condor dropped and the Cross Bow men came 
boiling down it.

If the Condor arrived much later in the day, and if they then became embroiled 
in a protracted dogfight with Johnny and Sam Ngewenyama’s men, there was a 
chance that they might find themselves pinned down in a night fight. In the 
darkness the home side would decidedly have the upper hand.

Now the cards had been dealt and there was nothing left to do but fly on to 
meet the dawn and the enemy.

Hector was in no doubt as to how he wished to pass the night. However, the only 
secluded area anywhere on board the overcrowded aircraft was the tiny luggage 
compartment between the flight deck and the galley in which Nastiya had 
imprisoned Yuri Volkov. Hector staked this out as his private domain, and as 
soon as the interior lights were turned down and the men settled for the night 
he took Jo’s hand and led her there.

There was no lock on the inside of the door, but they jammed it closed with 
their bodies. The partition walls were thin, but they cared not who heard their 
cries. There was not enough space for them to lie side by side, but that had 
never been Hector’s intention. The floor was hard, but to them it felt as 
soft as a feather bed. The night was long, but for them it was fleeting. They 
were heading into the valley of the shadow of death, but they whispered to each 
other only of a long life shared and love everlasting. In the morning they had 
not rested but they were refreshed and strong, and they believed they were as 
immortal as their love for each other.

When the alarm of Hector’s wristwatch alerted them they left their hidey-hole 
and went forward and stood side by side in the doorway of the cockpit. Bernie 
swivelled around in the left-hand pilot’s seat to greet them.

‘Sleep well?’ He smothered a grin.

‘Marvellous,’ Hector told him. ‘Plain bloody marvellous. How much longer 
have we got to run, Bernie?’

‘Don’t ask me.’ Bernie shrugged. ‘I’m just the driver. Ask your 
navigator.’

‘How are we doing, Nella?’ Hector turned to her.

‘Forty-three minutes to destination. That big shiny thing out there ahead of 
us is Lake Tanganyika.’

Hector and Jo stood side by side, leaning on the backs of the pilots’ seats 
and peering ahead.

The sun had almost cleared the horizon on their port side and they were flying 
down a deep valley of tumbling cumulus nimbus cloud. The peaks reached high 
above their own meagre fifteen thousand feet of altitude which the instruments 
on the dashboard were recording. The cloud mountains seemed solid as ice, 
silver shaded with the blue of bruises.

The rising sun cast the Condor’s shadow on the glistening slopes of cloud. 
Grossly enlarged and distorted, it was surrounded by a gloriole of rainbow 
colours as it kept pace and station with them.

‘Oh, look!’ Jo cried aloud and pointed over the Condor’s nose. At their 
own level and directly ahead the dark shape of a fish eagle in flight was 
backlit by the reflection of the clouds. It was suspended on widespread 
pinions, seeming to hang motionless. But as the Condor rushed towards it, the 
bird dropped one wing and plummeted into a slanted dive across their path. It 
passed so close to their wingtip that they were able to see the glitter of its 
agate brown eye in the yellow mask of facial skin, and make out the individual 
feathers in its snowy cap flattened to its skull by the speed of its dive.

‘Oh God, what a magnificent creature!’ Jo cried with delight as the eagle 
was snatched from their view and swallowed up by the immensity of space.

Far below them the African savannah and forests were dappled with cloud shadow 
and brilliant sunlight. Directly ahead the burnished silver surface of the lake 
dazzled them.

Bernie eased back the throttles to begin the descent, and they dropped towards 
the earth between the glistening cloud slopes. The needles on the altimeter 
gauges rotated smoothly anti-clockwise and they crossed the north-eastern shore 
of the lake at nine thousand feet.

‘Twenty-one minutes to destination,’ Nella warned them. Hector took the 
radio microphone from her and held it to his lips. His voice boomed over the 
Condor’s internal PA system. ‘Wakey, wakey, gentlemen! Drop your cocks and 
grab your socks! Twenty minutes to target.’

Below them the lake surface was strewn with thin tendrils of mist. Flights of 
flamingo hundreds strong flew low over them. The birds followed each other in 
single file. Upthrusts of warm air lifted them in succession and then dropped 
them again as they encountered cooler downdraughts, so that they wove 
undulating pink daisy chains above the lake surface. From the cockpit they 
watched in awed silence.

‘Fifteen minutes to destination.’ Nella broke the spell.

Almost immediately after her Jo shouted out, ‘There it is! Dead ahead! The 
castle on the hill!’

Hector unhooked the hand mike of the PA system and spoke into it. ‘Okay, all 
team leaders switch on your Birkin repeater earphones. We are going live with 
Emma in Houston.’ He nodded at Jo to make the contact.

‘Do you copy, Emma?’ Jo spoke in conversational tones into her Birkin and 
the response came back immediately.

‘I copy you, Jo. I have a live fix on both of the targets. Both Big Boy and 
Little Boy are in the main bedroom area of the castle. They have company with 
them as usual. All of them appear to be asleep.’ Emma’s tone changed 
abruptly, becoming sharper. ‘Hold on, Big Boy is stirring. He is getting out 
of the bed and now he is crossing the room towards the terrace doors. I have 
lost him now. He must have exited onto the terrace.’

‘Do you think he has heard our aircraft’s engines and he is having a 
look-see?’ Jo suggested.

‘Yes, that’s almost certainly what is happening,’ Emma agreed. ‘The 
others are stirring now. Yes, I am picking up the sound of your engines on my 
headset. Now everybody is climbing out of bed. I haven’t seen so much naked 
flesh on parade since the last time I was in Vegas.’

*

Carl Bannock opened his eyes, awakened by the fact that Johnny Congo was no 
longer in bed with him. Over the years that they had been together he had 
become completely accustomed to the bass rumble and hiss of Johnny’s snores. 
It gave him a comforting sense of security and complete protection. He sat up 
in the huge rumpled bed and looked around blearily. The bedroom was the size of 
a ballroom. Counting the one he lay upon, there were twenty-four other beds 
arranged in the centre of the floor. On all of these, except one, naked bodies 
of both sexes were sprawled in the same wild profusion as those of the 
casualties following an epic and hard-fought battle. ‘Gettysburg and The 
Alamo all rolled into one.’ He grinned and the image made him feel better. 
There was a girl lying across his legs, and her skinny posterior reawakened his 
interest for a brief moment, but then he touched his own genitalia and they 
were still swollen and inflamed from the previous evening’s revelry.

‘Get off of me, you pretty little whore.’ He kicked her away and she 
flopped over onto her back without waking, still lost in a haze of drugs and 
alcohol.

He sat up slowly and rubbed his temples where the pain throbbed dully, and he 
looked around the room. His attention concentrated on the only unoccupied bed. 
For a while he was puzzled by the fact that the bed sheets on it were soaked 
with blood and other bodily fluids. Then slowly the events of the previous 
evening’s entertainment came back to him. He shook his head and frowned, as 
he began vaguely to recall how at one juncture in the revelry Johnny Congo had 
suddenly insisted on anally raping the youngest and tiniest of the females. 
Although her documents proved that she was eighteen years of age, her body was 
elfin and childlike; which is what had excited Johnny. Up until then she had 
stoutly resisted all his efforts to inveigle her into the act, even to the 
extent of offering her an absurd amount of money. However, this was the last 
evening and Johnny had reached the limit of his patience. Carl chuckled as his 
memories flooded back in full force. It had taken all the efforts of Carl and 
two of the strongest ladyboys to hold the girl still for Johnny to achieve his 
purpose. Her struggles, screams and finally her broken sobbing had been covered 
by Johnny Congo’s roars of abandoned feral ecstasy, and by the shouts and the 
laughter of the men who held her and the spectators who had gathered around the 
bed to watch and cheer Johnny on to greater endeavours.

It was only later that Carl realized, despite his drug-befuddled wits, what 
grievous internal injuries Johnny had inflicted on the girl.

‘Shit, Blackbird, you have torn her up something awful. The little whore is 
bleeding to death. It’s soaked clean through the mattress.’

‘Well then, you know what we got to do with her, don’t you, white boy?’ 
Johnny growled. Without waiting for an answer Johnny picked the girl up from 
the bed and carried her out onto the ramparts. Carl trailed after them. None of 
the others were in a fit state of mind to notice them leave the room.

There was a full moon high in the night sky, paling out the stars and bathing 
the terrace in a pearly luminosity. Carl found himself gripped by a sense of 
almost religious awe as he followed Johnny down the staircase to the gardens. 
His gigantic naked form was touched by silver moonlight, like a high priest of 
some arcane sect, carrying the sacrifice to place it on the altar of an ancient 
African god.

When Johnny reached the stone retaining wall of the crocodile pen he lifted the 
girl high over his head. It made such a striking vignette that Carl was moved 
to tears and the words from a role he had once performed at his prep school in 
Houston reoccurred spontaneously to him. He fell to his knees and intoned 
sonorously,

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

to the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

Still holding the girl above his head, Johnny turned back and stared at Carl in 
amazement. When he spoke his tone was awed. ‘Hell, Carl baby! That was real 
cool. I never thought you could talk that kind of spooky mumbo-jumbo shit, man. 
What’s it mean?’

‘It means just drop her over the side, Johnny.’

They both listened to the splash as the girl hit the water far below, and then 
to the thrashing of the great scaly bodies as the crocodiles fed.

Carl stayed on his knees until there was silence and then he rose slowly to his 
feet.

‘That was beautiful, Johnny,’ he said softly. ‘That’s one of the most 
beautiful and moving things I have ever watched.’

The memory of it lingered with him now, even though he tried to thrust it aside.

Then he thought of Johnny again and he looked around the dishevelled room. 
There was no sign of him. Carl swung his legs over the side of the bed and 
stood up. He started across the floor towards the doors onto the terrace. He 
stepped warily around the discarded hypodermic syringes and the puddles of 
vomit, the broken wine and vodka bottles and the abandoned footwear and 
clothing. He was halfway to the door when he heard Johnny bellow from the 
ramparts beyond.

‘Here she comes. Wake up, everybody. Here comes the Condor.’

Most of the sleeping figures roused themselves, and they followed Carl, 
trooping out onto the ramparts where Johnny stood, shading his eyes with both 
hands against the rays of the rising sun as he peered up into the sky. They 
crowded around him, a plethora of skin colours ranging from Carl’s milky 
white, through the pale yellow and gold of their guests to Johnny’s 
glistening anthracite.

‘I was beginning to doubt that oaf Volkov would ever find his way back here 
without radio contact. But here he comes!’ Carl said. ‘Let’s go down and 
see what replacements he has brought us for this load of tired yellow 
whores.’ He tweaked the brown nipples of the Thai prostitute at his side, and 
she shrieked obligingly. Even after such a short acquaintance they had all 
learned in what direction Carl’s fancies lay; and just how much he enjoyed 
hearing a squeal of pain.

‘I am going to give Yuri a real tongue-lashing. I have been thinking up a few 
more choice insults for him. Come on, everybody, let’s go down and meet our 
new friends, and indulge in a little Yuri baiting.’

Carl led them back into the bedroom where they hastily retrieved last night’s 
clothing that was scattered all about the floor and furniture in wild abandon. 
They pulled it on as they trooped noisily down the staircase and headed for the 
courtyard.

The homecoming of the Condor was always a cause for celebration, laden as she 
was with gifts and luxuries and exciting new faces and bodies. For the guests 
who had stayed out their time in this strange and frightening place it was the 
promise of a return to home and safety.

Emma in faraway Houston picked up this concerted movement on her hidden cameras 
in the main rooms and even the one set atop the tallest minaret rising above 
the castle walls. She reported it to Jo Stanley in the approaching Condor.

‘There are three vehicles leaving through the main gate and heading down the 
hill in convoy towards the landing field…’

*

Johnny Congo led the convoy. He was driving the white Rover at his usual 
breakneck speed. Sam Ngewenyama was in the front passenger seat beside him. He 
was almost as eager as Johnny to get a first glimpse of the latest imports from 
Bangkok. He knew that they would be passed down to him in due course.

Into the back seat were crammed five of his armed goons. They were clad in 
ex-US Army issue camouflage and bedecked with bandoliers of ammunition. The 
barrels of their automatic rifles stuck out of the open windows. Every time 
Johnny hit a bump in the road they were thrown against each other. Their 
helmets and weapons clashed together or banged against the roof of the bouncing 
Rover.

Carl Bannock drove close behind Johnny in one of the Russian amphibious landing 
craft. He was dressed in a silk dressing gown with a vivid red paisley pattern. 
His hair was uncombed and it fluttered in the slipstream of the ungainly 
vehicle as he sat at the driving wheel. Around him Thai girls and transvestites 
clung onto whatever handholds they could find as the vehicle bounced and bucked 
over the rough track.

All of them were in the high festive mood induced by cannabis cheroots and 
other lively substances which Carl had made freely available during the night. 
Most of them were in a state of rude déshabillé. One of the trannies wore 
nothing more than a pair of Johnny’s voluminous underpants that kept sagging 
over his hips to expose the crease of his buttocks behind, and much more in 
front. As soon as he hoisted them up, the shorts immediately began their next 
downwards slide. One of the real girls stood behind Carl dressed only in his 
discarded shirt that was unbuttoned down the front and blew out behind her like 
a cloak. She clapped her hands over his eyes every time Carl raced down towards 
the next sharp bend in the track. They all squealed and shrieked with laughter 
as the landing craft careened around the bend with its outer wheels teetering 
over the drop.

The last vehicle in the convoy was the second amphibian landing craft driven by 
one of the militia sergeants. It had been left far behind the other two. It was 
carrying a platoon of the castle guard that had been so hastily assembled that 
most of them were still trying to don their uniforms, and some of them had even 
forgotten their weapons.

Johnny in the Rover was the first one down the hill and he raced towards the 
gates in the high mesh fencing that now surrounded the airstrip. He was 
sounding his horn to warn the airport guards of his approach. Two of them 
emerged from the guard hut and ran to open the gates. Johnny led the convoy 
through and turned towards the terminal end of the runway furthest from the 
lake shore.

They parked beside the sandbagged redoubt which housed the heavy machine guns 
that protected the landing strip, which was sited in front of other airport 
buildings. One of these was the barracks that housed Sam Ngewenyama’s thugs 
and their families. The other massive building was the warehouse in which were 
stored the cargoes brought in by the Condor, as well as the goods awaiting 
export: the precious coltan and other conflict minerals from the Congolese 
mines.

To enable the Condor to reach the main doors on the southern side of the 
warehouse when she was taking on or discharging cargo was a taxi path leading 
from the runway to the tall sliding warehouse doors.

By this time the rising sun was clear of the horizon. Every head was uplifted 
and turned to watch the Condor approaching at low level over the lake. As the 
huge aircraft crossed the narrow brown beach at the edge of the lake and lined 
up with the runway of the airstrip, Bernie Vosloo at the controls waggled the 
wings in greeting. The crowd around the waiting trucks at the westerly end of 
the airfield had the sun full in their eyes, as Hector had intended when he 
ordered the approach. He didn’t want to give them a clear look at the Condor 
until it was on the ground, and up close at point-blank range.

Nevertheless the welcoming crowds were undeterred. They screamed and danced 
with excitement. As the Condor howled over their heads some of them ducked 
instinctively, but most of them caught a glimpse of the lovely women with long 
dark hair who looked down from the Condor’s portholes and waved at them. Even 
Sam Ngewenyama’s machine gunners abandoned their weapons and scrambled up to 
stand on top of the sandbags to join in the tumultuous welcome.

It had taken all Paddy O’Brien’s persuasive powers, short of the threat of 
the firing squad, to induce fifteen of his youngest troopers to don wigs and 
brightly coloured blouses and to permit Jo and Nastiya to plaster their faces 
with pancake make-up and lipstick.

Hector was crouched down between the two pilots’ seats, where he was out of 
sight from the ground but able to issue quick commands to Bernie and Nella at 
the controls. To disguise her femininity from watchers on the ground, Nella was 
wearing a baseball cap and a pair of dark glasses that she had borrowed from 
Yuri Volkov. She hoped that the watchers on the ground would recognize these 
items of apparel.

Both Bernie and Nella were enjoying themselves immensely. They were throwing 
the massive Condor around the sky with the gleeful abandon of teenagers on a 
Saturday-night spree. They would never have treated their own cherished 
Hercules with the same reckless disrespect.

‘Okay, bring her up and go around for your final approach,’ Hector told 
them as he clung to the arms of the command seat with both hands. Between them 
the two Vosloos hauled the nose up into a gut-swooping climb and turned out 
wide over the forest-clad mountains on the borders of Congolese territory. Then 
they came around in a wide circle, turning cross-wind and then onto the final 
approach over the airport buildings. Ahead of them the runway stretched three 
thousand metres down towards the lake shore. At the eastern end of it stood the 
second sandbagged redoubt housing the other battery of fifty-calibre heavy 
machine guns.

Bernie dropped his wing flaps to reduce the Condor’s airspeed and Nella 
helped him ease back on the throttle handles between the seats. Between them 
they lowered the aircraft gently onto the red dirt surface of the landing 
strip, and as soon as she settled they threw the engines into reverse thrust 
and applied the wheel brakes to bleed the speed off her.

The thrust of the mighty engines ripped a dense and swirling cloud of red dust 
from the surface of the runway behind the Condor.

‘Now hear me, Dave!’ Hector spoke over the internal PA system. ‘We are 
eight hundred metres from your drop-off.’ He read the distances from the 
boards that stood along the left-hand side of the runway as they flashed by. 
‘Five hundred metres, three hundred metres…’ Dave Imbiss and his Red Team 
had already left their seats and gone back into the cargo hold. Now they were 
poised tensely at the head of the rear ramp.

‘As soon as the ramp goes down don’t wait for my order, Dave, just go for 
broke!’ Hector’s voice was raised sharply. They roared over the last two 
hundred metres towards the armed redoubt from which the twin barrels of the 
machine guns were trained upon them like the eyes of an executioner. Bernie was 
gauging the distance to travel with an expert eye.

For a moment Hector thought he had misjudged it, and that they were going to 
crash into the wall of sandbags at sixty miles an hour. He braced himself and 
locked his fingers onto the arms of the seats.

At the last moment Bernie pushed the starboard engines of the Condor to full 
power; at the same time Nella flung the port engines into full reverse thrust. 
Simultaneously they both stood on the left-hand brake pedals. The condor spun 
into a violent 180-degree turn and came to a juddering halt with the exhaust 
nozzles of her four jet engines pointed at the machine-gun emplacement from a 
distance of only one hundred metres.

For a count of ten seconds Bernie and Nella kept the engines howling at full 
power, but at the same time they prevented the Condor from moving forward by 
locking on full wheel brakes. The entire fuselage of the Condor lurched and 
bucked like a wild animal in a trap, protesting this intolerably harsh 
treatment. The speed of the gases emitted by her engine nozzles far exceeded 
that of any tornado; it rocketed up towards the speed of sound. It blew the 
first row of sandbags off the top of the redoubt wall. The exhaust gases picked 
up the sand and loose gravel from the surface of the runway and fired it back 
like tiny bullets into the faces of the gunners peering through the embrasures 
in the wall of sandbags. It blinded them instantly, scoring their eyeballs, 
sand-blasting their eyelids and the skin of their faces. Then it hurled their 
heavy weapons back into their faces, killing or maiming most of them. Their 
slack bodies were hurled backwards across the interior of the redoubt to smash 
into the rear wall.

‘Shut down power!’ Hector shouted at Bernie above the thunder of the jet 
engines, and he slapped the shoulders of the pilots to reinforce the order. The 
engines’ roar dropped to a gentle whisper and the Condor ceased her wild 
gyrations.

‘Open the rear ramp!’ Hector’s voice was loud in the comparative silence. 
‘Red Team! Go! Go! Go!’ The orders were superfluous, but in the heat of the 
moment he shouted them anyway.

The belly of the Condor cleared the ground by a mere four feet, so the exit 
ramp did not have far to drop before it hit the ground, and Dave Imbiss led his 
twelve-man team sprinting down the ramp and across the open ground to the 
redoubt. They swarmed over the top of the wall and were into the redoubt with 
the speed and agility of a troop of hungry monkeys climbing a banana tree. 
Their orders from Hector were to take no prisoners and to leave no live enemy 
in their rear, but to do it quietly. They found little resistance inside the 
redoubt.

The gunners and their loaders were blinded and out of the fight. Most of them 
were already completely quiescent, scattered around the interior of the redoubt 
like the rag dolls of naughty child. A few were rolling about on the sandy 
floor, wailing in agony and cupping their ruined faces in their hands. A karate 
chop with the blade of the hand was sufficient to silence them permanently. 
However, one of the enemy broke from cover behind the stack of ammunition 
crates where he had escaped the main rush of exhaust gases through the 
embrasures.

He reached the narrow doorway in the rear of the redoubt. Dave Imbiss raised 
the heavy trench knife he was carrying in his right hand. He swung it back over 
his shoulder, then he whipped his whole upper body into the throw. The ten-inch 
blade made one and a half revolutions in flight before it struck the running 
man between the shoulder blades. He lost direction and ran into the wall of 
sandbags. He slid slowly down the wall, trying to reach over his shoulders with 
both hands to grip the knife hilt. He coughed once and a spurt of blood hosed 
from his mouth onto the sandbag in front of his face. His hands dropped to his 
sides and he doubled up on his knees with his forehead pressed to the floor as 
if in prayer.

Dave Imbiss stepped up behind him and placed one booted foot on the back of his 
neck to steady him while he pulled the blood-smeared blade out of his flesh and 
wiped it clean on the dead man’s shirt sleeve. At the same time he spoke 
quietly into the voice-activated mike of the Birkin.

‘This is Red Leader. Target secured.’

It was all over in little more than two minutes from the time they exited the 
Condor. The runway was three kilometres long. At that distance neither Johnny 
Congo nor Carl Bannock at the further end had been able to see anything through 
the dust cloud kicked up by the exhausts, or to hear anything other than the 
brief thunder of the Condor’s engines at full power.

‘Okay! Initiating Phase Two,’ Hector acknowledged. ‘Dave, spike the guns 
you have captured and then get your arses down the runway to back us up.’

The MGs mounted in the embrasures were all ex-US Army Browning fifty-calibre 
weapons that Dave knew intimately. He went down the line swiftly and stripped 
out the sliding breechblock from each of them. He handed the blocks one at a 
time to the men with him. They ran with them through the rear entrance of the 
redoubt and threw them far out into the lake. Once the guns were out of action, 
Dave formed his men up in open order, and led them at a jog trot down the 
runway towards the airport building three kilometres away. They had covered 
less than a quarter of that distance when there was the sudden rattle of 
small-arms fire ahead of them.

*

The Condor taxied sedately back down the runway towards the main airport 
building, beside which waited the three parked vehicles and Johnny Congo’s 
reception committee.

Hector stood well back against the rear bulkhead of the cockpit, crouching 
behind the pilots where he could not be seen through the windshield of the 
cockpit. With a pair of binoculars he was scanning the layout of the terminal 
buildings and the sandbagged redoubt.

‘Okay, I have a positive ID on Johnny Congo. He is the big black brute on the 
roof of the white vehicle to the right of the redoubt. Dark-blue shirt and 
cream-coloured chinos. It’s impossible to mistake the swine,’ he spoke into 
his mike for all his team leaders to hear him. ‘And there is Carl Bannock 
standing on top of the wall of sandbags above the MG emplacements. He is doing 
a war dance and waving an automatic rifle over his head. The little bastard is 
wearing a long red-patterned robe. It looks like a dressing gown. He is 
barefooted, as though he has just climbed out of bed. He must be totally out of 
his mind with giggle juice. Just remember all of you that he is mine.’ His 
tone was fierce. ‘There is a crowd milling around the parked vehicles. It’s 
difficult to say how many; maybe fifty or sixty or even a hundred of them; all 
Johnny’s hookers and thugs. His whores are decked out in all sorts of weird 
gear. Most of them are almost naked and it looks as though a few are totally 
starkers, letting everything hang out all over the scenery. There is going to 
be bloody pandemonium when the shooting starts. Don’t be too squeamish about 
peripheral damage when we engage. Better a few innocent bystanders go down than 
you let a bogey stay on his feet to take us under fire.’

Jo’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘I didn’t hear that. So help me God, I 
never heard that!’

Hector frowned, and then went quiet as the Condor neared the end of the runway. 
The range closed rapidly and he was better able to weigh the odds and to make 
his final decisions. He started speaking again, well aware that he was the only 
man aboard, apart from the pilots, who could see what was awaiting them.

‘The layout of this redoubt looks exactly the same as the one Dave has just 
silenced. They have the same pairs of twin-barrelled fifty-calibre MGs sited in 
embrasures and pointed at us. The good news is that the sides of the embrasures 
are too deep to permit the weapons to traverse to either left or right. The bad 
news is that we don’t have the option of blowing dust into the faces of the 
gunners. If we try to pull that stunt again, all those goons who are outside 
the jet blast will throw down a solid sheet of fire on us…’ Hector broke 
off suddenly as he felt a light touch on his shoulder and he looked around 
quickly.

Jo stood close behind him. Up until that time he had been unaware that she had 
left the jump seat in the galley.

‘Hector, listen to me,’ she urged him quietly. ‘Why don’t you use the 
warehouse building over there as a shield?’ She pointed ahead through the 
windscreen of the cockpit. ‘If Bernie takes the Condor down the taxi path on 
the left-hand side of the warehouse we will be hidden from Johnny Congo for as 
long as it takes to deploy the rest of your assault teams. Johnny will go on 
believing you are a bunch of juicy little call girls until you come roaring out 
from behind the warehouse.’

Hector stared at her for a moment, reviling himself silently for not having 
seen the answer as quickly as she had. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘I owe you 
another one.’ And then he turned back to the pilots.

‘Bernie, you heard the lady! Go straight past the redoubt. Tuck us in behind 
that warehouse as close as you can get. Then immediately drop the landing ramp. 
Keep all four engines running, and stand by for a quick turnaround and an 
emergency getaway if things go haywire.’

Then he spoke quietly into the PA system. ‘Heads up, everybody! We are only 
minutes away from Go. We are going to park behind the main airport buildings. 
We will be protected from hostile fire while we disembark. Both White and Black 
Teams move back to your exit stations, now!’

He patted Bernie and Nella on their shoulders. ‘There is the secure laager 
for the Condor.’ He pointed it out to them. ‘Get this old bus into it just 
as soon as we are clear. Now I am off. Bye-bye! Sit tight! We’ll be back.’

‘Happy hunting, Hector,’ Nella replied and he turned and left the cockpit. 
He paused only to embrace Jo Stanley and kiss her parted lips. Then he 
whispered into her mouth, ‘I adore you, but for once please do what I ask. 
Stay here and don’t come after me. It’s a dangerous world out there. I need 
you to be with me for another fifty years or so.’

He left her and ran back through the empty passenger cabin. His men had already 
moved back to their places at the rear exit ramp. He followed them through the 
open pressure door into the cavernous cargo hold. Paddy’s Black Team was 
drawn up on the starboard side of the hold. Paul had the White Team on the port 
side.

As Hector hurried down between the ranks towards the rear of the hold he was 
checking his equipment for the last time.

He wore a camouflage flak-jacket of Kevlar body armour and a helmet of the same 
material. Both of these were resistant to multiple hits from NATO-standard 
small arms. In the MOLLE pockets attached to his jacket by Velcro fastening he 
carried two M84 flash-bang stun grenades and twenty spare magazines each 
containing forty rounds of 9mm parabellum ammunition for his submachine gun. In 
the front fastening of the jacket was a tiny hidden pocket. It was just large 
enough to contain one of the Hypnos knock-down hypodermic syringes from Dave 
Imbiss’s arsenal of dirty tricks.

He carried a Brügger & Thomet MP9 submachine gun as his main weapon. He loved 
it for its small size, light weight, quick handling and superb accuracy. With a 
flick of the thumb he was able to change from single shot to nine hundred 
rounds per minute cyclic rate of fire. Despite its short barrel the top-mounted 
optic sight allowed him to be certain of hitting a hen’s egg-size target with 
four shots out of five at a range of fifty yards, shooting out of hand.

Hector reached the loading ramp where Paddy and Nastiya waited at the head of 
the Black Team, and he told them quietly, ‘Bernie is going to park us behind 
the warehouse on the far side of the airport, so initially we will be screened 
by it from Johnny Congo and his goons. As soon as we disembark we are going to 
split up. I am going to take my team to the right and come out behind the 
sandbagged redoubt. You will go the long way round the back of the warehouse 
and the barracks to get behind them. I will keep them busy on my side until you 
hit them in the rear. Between us we have to stop them retreating up the hill. 
At all times bear in mind that we are only here to take Johnny and Carl, not to 
fight it out to the last man standing. As soon as we have grabbed those two we 
will get the hell out of here. If we are forced to follow them through the maze 
of the castle we are going to take casualties.’

‘Perish the thought,’ Paddy grunted.

‘My team will go out first. As soon as we are clear you can disembark.’ 
Hector punched Paddy’s arm lightly. ‘Break a leg!’ He grinned at him. 
Paddy grinned back. Both of them were high on the fizz of blood in their veins, 
the heady excitement of mortal danger that kept bringing them back into the 
fight.

Hector turned away and went to join Paul Stowe at the head of the White Team on 
the other side of the hold. The Condor jolted to a standstill so abruptly that 
they were almost thrown off their feet. The rear loading ramp started to drop, 
but so torturously slowly that Hector could not contain his impatience.

‘Follow me!’ he snapped at Paul. Then he ran up the moving ramp and dived 
head-first through the narrow opening. It was an eight foot drop to the ground 
on the outside. As he fell he flipped his body over to land on his feet like a 
cat. He absorbed the shock with his legs and then bounded forward towards the 
corner of the warehouse. He heard his men hitting the ground behind him and 
pounding after him but he did not spare them a backwards glance.

He reached the corner and flattened himself against the wall. He was breathing 
lightly but could feel his heart pumping like a well-tuned racing motor. As he 
glanced around the corner of the wall his vision was as bright and focussed as 
a gun sight.

Very little had changed in the minutes since he had last seen it; Johnny was 
still standing on top of the Rover with his hands on his hips. Around the 
vehicle were clustered the motley horde of militiamen and juvenile whores. Most 
of them were staring perplexedly towards where they had seen the Condor 
disappear behind the warehouse. Some of the Thai toys were still dancing and 
clapping their hands, but one of the semi-naked girls was leaning against the 
side of the Rover and copiously vomiting up the liquor she had been fed.

The machine gunners in the redoubt had left their weapons and clambered up the 
wall to peer over the sandbags in his direction. However, what attracted 
Hector’s full attention instantly was the bizarre figure of Carl Bannock 
still balancing on top of the wall. He was no longer dancing, but unlike all 
the others his back was half turned to Hector, and he was shouting at Johnny 
Congo.

‘What the hell is that stupid mothering arsehole, Yuri Volkov, playing at 
now?’ he yelled.

He was totally unaware of Hector’s gaze upon him. The range was less than 
fifty yards. In his hands Hector held one of the sweetest little firearms he 
had ever fired. Before him was the cleanest shot that the fickle gods of war 
had ever presented to Hector. The man he had come to kill was completely at his 
mercy.

There was only one consideration preventing him from doing so. He wanted to be 
looking into Carl’s eyes as he died. He wanted to smell the rancid odour of 
overwhelming terror on his dying breath. He wanted the last thing Carl ever 
heard to be the name of the woman Hector had loved. He wanted to whisper 
Hazel’s name in his ear at the final moment so that Carl would carry it with 
him into the flames of hell.

While he hesitated, the moment was passing. He began to lift the weapon, but 
suddenly Johnny Congo bellowed in a voice of thunder, ‘Get down off that 
wall, Carl, you stupid prick. This is a trap. It isn’t Yuri in that freaking 
plane. It’s Hector Cross.’ His feral instincts were so critically tuned 
that Johnny Congo had smelled the danger.

Carl did not react at once to the warning; he remained transfixed. The 
opportunity was still there for Hector, but now it was fleeting. Swiftly but 
smoothly he brought up the gun and fired a five-round burst. The recoil was so 
light that through the magnification of the optical lens he could watch his 
bullets strike.

He had aimed at Carl’s legs to anchor him, but not to kill him. Two of his 
bullets missed. He saw one kick up a tiny puff of dust way out near the 
perimeter fence. The second missed shot caught the sick Thai woman in the 
background as she leaned heaving with nausea against the side of the Rover. It 
must have hit her in the head for she went down as though a trapdoor had opened 
under her feet.

The other three bullets all hit Carl where Hector had aimed. One went into the 
ankle joint of his bare left foot. Judging by the angle of entry Hector knew 
that it had shattered the complex of metatarsal bones where they hinged with 
the descending fibula and tibia bones. The other two bullets went marginally 
higher as the gun rode up in Hector’s hands with the recoil. Carl’s legs 
were directly in line with each other, so when the bullets passed through the 
left leg they went on to strike the right one behind it, breaking bones in both.

Simultaneously his legs folded up under him and he went over backwards. He 
tumbled down the far wall of the redoubt and out of Hector’s sight.

Just as swiftly Johnny Congo disappeared from the roof of the white vehicle, 
but he had jumped. Hector could still hear his voice roaring orders at Sam 
Ngewenyama in Swahili. Hector had been fluent in that language since childhood. 
He understood that Johnny was ordering Sam and his men to catch the Thai whores 
and use them as a screen to deter the attackers.

*

Under cover of the walls of the sandbagged redoubt Johnny ran forward to where 
Carl Bannock was writhing in a puddle of his own blood on the hardstanding of 
the runway.

‘My legs!’ Carl whimpered. ‘Oh God help me. Both my legs are broken.’ 
Then his voice changed to a wail of terror. ‘Johnny! Please help me. Where 
are you, Johnny?’

‘I am right here with you, Carl baby.’ Johnny stooped over him and lifted 
him against his chest like an infant. Carl squealed again as his shattered legs 
twisted and swung loosely, bone grinding on shattered bone chips. Johnny ran 
with him back to the Rover.

Sam Ngewenyama’s thugs chased down and rounded up most of the Thai whores, 
although a few escaped and raced away terrified and screaming amongst the 
airport buildings. The thugs dragged those they had captured back towards the 
vehicles. Twisting their arms up behind their backs, they forced them to face 
outwards towards Hector’s men.

*

As soon as Carl dropped out of sight behind the redoubt wall, Hector ran 
forward followed closely by Paul Stowe and the rest of the White Team. Hector 
came around the corner of the redoubt wall, and found Johnny with Carl in his 
arms and his gang bunched up around him in full retreat back towards the three 
parked vehicles, dragging their struggling hostages with them.

Johnny Congo’s conscripts were all men of the Nilotic family of tribes. They 
were by their very origins taller than most other human beings. They disdained 
any man less than six feet in height as a stunted dwarf. They towered head and 
shoulders over the tiny oriental hostages behind whom they were trying to take 
shelter. They were also screening Johnny Congo and the body he was carrying 
back to the Range Rover.

‘Go for head shots!’ Hector snapped at Paul. ‘Keep your aim high, and try 
not to hit the little yellow buggers.’

In the centre of the retreating line Sam Ngewenyama was the tallest of them 
all. Hector locked eyes with him and Sam saw the little B&T submachine gun in 
Hector’s hands coming up. He tried to get in the first shot, swinging up the 
heavy rifle in one hand. The AK-47 is notorious for its tendency to ride up in 
automatic mode. This is almost impossible to control with a single hand. To 
exacerbate Sam’s predicament the naked ladyboy that he was trying to subdue 
with his other hand pulled Sam off balance at the critical moment. His first 
burst kicked up dust around Hector’s feet without touching him. A fraction of 
a second later Hector replied with a single shot that struck Sam in his 
forehead, a half-inch above the bridge of his nose. He went down in a tangle of 
lanky arms and legs.

Without lowering his weapon Hector swept it along the line of retreating 
militia. He fired three more single shots in quick succession, aiming at their 
exposed heads. As each shot cracked out one of the militia dropped, kicking and 
twitching convulsively.

The shortest man amongst them was at the end of their line furthest from 
Hector. His flat uncouth features were scarred by smallpox. The little yellow 
girl he was holding as a shield broke out of his grip and raced away, leaving 
both his hands free for a clean shot. He managed to get off a lucky burst with 
his AK. The Cross Bow men flanking Paul Stowe were both hit and they went down.

Hector swivelled and fired through the gap they had left. Scarface dropped his 
rifle and walked backwards, clutching his throat with both hands. Then he fell 
on his back still clutching his throat. Hector switched his attention to the 
thugs in front of him. He got off a short burst before the weapon fired its 
last round. He released the empty magazine, but before he could load a fresh 
one the line of militiamen confronting him disintegrated and scattered.

Most of them ran straight into Paddy’s Black Team as they charged around the 
far side of the warehouse buildings. Hector smiled grimly at the success of his 
pincer movement and left the survivors for Paddy to deal with.

He switched all his attention back to the two men he had come to kill. He saw 
that behind the screen of his retreating men Johnny had run with Carl in his 
arms to the Rover, carrying him around the far side of it. He threw him into 
the back seat, then he darted to the driver’s side to get behind the wheel.

Hector tried to get a clear shot at him. But now the residents of the barracks 
behind the warehouse, panicked by the shouting and the gunfire, came swarming 
out of the building like ants from a nest being attacked by killer wasps. 
Paddy’s men came up hard behind them, driving them to wilder abandon, until 
they ran headlong into the thugs and the terrified Thai whores trying to escape 
from Hector’s team. This throng of humanity swept across Hector’s front, 
between him and his target, foiling Hector’s aim.

Hector ran forward, shoving hysterical tribeswomen and their squalling brats 
out of his way, but he saw that he was not going to be able to prevent Johnny 
escaping in the Rover.

Johnny already had the door open and as he ducked his head to climb into the 
cab Hector shouldered to one side a black woman with an infant strapped to her 
back. Then he let fly with the machine pistol. He emptied a full magazine at 
Johnny. He saw his bullets splatter against the side of the Rover, starring the 
glass of the windows and dimpling the paintwork. But the devil’s luck held 
true. Johnny was behind the wheel and unscathed when the gun in Hector’s 
hands clicked on an empty chamber.

Johnny gunned the engine, spinning the wheels in the dirt and throwing up dust. 
When the heavily lugged tyres bit the Rover shot away down the road towards the 
airport gates.

Hector ran to the nearer of the two abandoned amphibious landing craft. He 
scrambled up the steel boarding ladder onto the boat-deck of this great 
ungainly machine. Then he ran forward to the pilot’s seat in the armoured 
turret in the bows. With a quick lift of relief he saw that the key was in the 
ignition switch on the control panel. The powerful diesel engine was still hot 
and it fired at the first kick. Then it throbbed rhythmically, blowing blue 
smoke through the elevated exhaust pipe above his head.

Behind him Paul Stowe had led his men up the ladder onto the deck. Hector saw 
that there were four of them missing, but he had known that casualties were 
inevitable. He put it out of his mind and jumped up on the driver’s seat, 
waving his arms and yelling at Paddy and Nastiya. They saw him and brought 
their team at a run, shoving the bewildered black women and children out of 
their path.

Behind them the remnants of Johnny’s routed forces were in full retreat. Most 
of them had thrown away their weapons and were running for the cover of the 
jungle. There was only one gateway on that side of the airfield and they jammed 
the opening in a struggling mass. The range was much too far for the little 
machine pistol to throw with any accuracy. Nevertheless Hector fired a full 
magazine at them to help them on their way. He aimed high to compensate for the 
distance. He saw none of them drop, but there was a sharp increase in their 
efforts to escape and the volume of their screaming.

Paddy was the first of his team up the ladder and into the landing craft. He 
shouted at Hector, ‘What happened to Johnny and his lover boy? Where did the 
bastards go to?’

‘That’s them there!’ Hector shouted back at him, and he pointed ahead at 
the gate in the perimeter fence just as the white Rover sped through it. 
‘Hurry it up, for Chrissake. They are getting clean away from us.’

There were three of Paddy’s men still clinging to the steel boarding ladder 
when Hector engaged the gears and drove away down the road towards the airport 
gates. He had seen Dave Imbiss leading his team at a brisk trot up the far side 
of the runway, heading for the warehouse and barracks. When Hector came abreast 
of them he swerved off the road, brought the landing craft to a halt and stood 
up in the control turret. He looked back and saw that Bernie had already 
started to taxi the Condor towards the laager. He shouted across the runway at 
Dave.

‘Get back there and stand guard over the Condor, until we get back. We are 
chasing Johnny up there.’ He pointed up at the castle. Dave waved and shouted 
an acknowledgement.

Hector dropped back into the driver’s seat, and then he accelerated out 
through the gates and took the landing craft onto the road leading up to the 
castle. Ahead of them he saw the dust of the white Rover. It was already more 
than halfway to the summit.

Cautiously Paddy, Nastiya and Paul made their way forward, clinging to the grab 
handles as the deck lurched and bounced under them. They clustered behind 
Hector. The speedometer on the dashboard was reading a reckless forty miles an 
hour, much too fast for this lumbering behemoth on the narrow twisting track. 
Nobody protested. They hung on grimly.

‘How many casualties did you take, Paddy?’ Hector demanded without taking 
his eyes off the road.

‘We had three men down,’ Paddy replied. ‘There was a bastard behind us in 
the barracks with an AK. He let us pass and then he opened on us from behind.’

‘But, I cancelled him out.’ Nastiya’s expression was serenely satisfied. 
‘And none of our casualties are fatal. They are all walkers. I sent them back 
to the plane.’

‘Good girl, Nazzy,’ Hector commended her, and then he glanced over his 
shoulder at Paul Stowe. ‘How steep was our butcher’s bill, Paul?’

‘Higher than Paddy’s, I’m sorry to say, sir,’ Paul replied. ‘Four of 
our boys went down. One is certainly a goner, maybe two of them.’

Hector ducked down lower in the control turret as a burst of AK-47 fire rattled 
against the bodywork of the vehicle. The others flung themselves down on the 
deck and huddled under the shelter of the armoured sides.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Hector demanded.

‘There is a bunch of goons up there on the castle battlements,’ Paddy 
replied. ‘This old bus should be impervious to small-arms fire. But just pray 
that they haven’t got an RPG or a couple of fifty-calibre cannon up there.’

‘I’ll leave the praying to you. I never touch the stuff when I’m 
driving.’ Hector kept his eyes on the road as he broadsided the craft around 
the next turn in a cloud of dust and loose gravel.

‘The way you drive the goons don’t need an RPG, Hector Cross,’ Nastiya 
told him severely. She crammed her Kevlar helmet down over her blonde curls 
with one hand and clung to Paddy’s shoulder with the other. As always they 
were using this frivolous banter to mask their essential terror.

Now the automatic rifle fire from the battlements fell on them with the 
intensity of a tropical monsoon storm. It pounded down on the armour plating 
like a berserk drummer, and screamed off it in ricochets. It ripped up the 
surface of the road ahead so they drove upwards through a fog of flying dust 
and tracer bullets.

Peering through the driver’s slit in the landing craft’s frontal armour, 
Hector glimpsed Johnny’s Rover disappearing through the castle gates above 
them. He swore bitterly as he watched the castle gates swing closed behind it.

The next twist in the road cut off his view of the main castle gates, but they 
were still exposed to hostile fire from the battlements much higher up. In the 
heart of the storm of flying bullets Hector spoke into the voice-activated mike 
of his Birkin.

‘Jo!’ He had to raise his voice to a shout for her to hear him. ‘Jo 
Stanley, are you copying?’

‘Affirmative!’ she replied immediately. ‘But goodness gracious me, what 
is all that din?’

‘Just a whiff of grape, as Bonaparte once remarked. More importantly, do you 
and Emma have a fix on Johnny and Carl? They have done a runner,’ Hector told 
her. ‘They have gone to ground in the castle.’

‘Affirmative,’ Jo confirmed. ‘Emma has a positive on her cameras in the 
castle. Your two targets have just driven into the courtyard in a white 
vehicle. Johnny has pulled Carl out of the rear door and is carrying him up the 
stairs into the main building. Carl seems to be injured. Emma can hear him 
moaning and she can see that he is bleeding.’

‘He is injured all right,’ Hector told her grimly. ‘I blew his bloody 
legs off.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Jo’s voice dropped to a horrified whisper. She did not 
attempt to disguise her shock.

‘You didn’t think we came here to play gin rummy with him, did you?’ he 
snapped at her. It was the first time he had ever done so, but her 
squeamishness in the heat of battle, when his own men were being killed and 
wounded, made him very angry. ‘This isn’t a game any longer. People are 
getting hurt out here. Pull yourself together, woman!’

As he was speaking he steered the vehicle around the last tight bend, and as 
they came out of it he saw the castle keep only three hundred yards ahead of 
them. The heavy wooden gates were shut tightly.

The road was now running almost parallel to the castle, and so close to the 
foot of the walls that they were screened from the enemy on the battlements. 
The barrage of gunfire coming down on them was cut off abruptly.

In the comparative silence Hector spoke again into the Birkin mike. ‘Jo, are 
you still reading me?’

‘Yes, sir. I am still reading you.’ Her tone was brittle as hoar frost. She 
had not taken his rebuke lightly.

God save us from amateur sulks and tantrums when we are trying to get the job 
done! he thought, but kept it to himself. Nevertheless, his tone was as cold as 
hers as he spoke into the mike.

‘Does Emma have a count of the strength of the garrison in the castle?’

‘Sir! Yes, sir!’ Jo replied. ‘Emma confirms the presence of twenty-three 
hostiles in the castle precincts, that is in addition to Johnny and Carl. 
Fifteen of them are on the battlements. Five more are defending the main 
gateway. And then the last three are with Johnny, assisting him to carry the 
man whose legs you blew off.’

‘Message received and understood.’ He ignored her gibe. His tone was 
neutral, but his thoughts were not: I shouldn’t have brought her along on 
this jaunt. I was not thinking with my head, I was taking orders from much 
lower down in my anatomy.

He did not check his speed as he neared the castle gates, instead he jammed his 
right foot down on the accelerator and the engine bellowed as he drove straight 
at them.

Now he was so close that he could pick out three gun slits in the gates 
themselves and two more in the stone jambs on either side of them. From all 
these openings protruded the black barrels of automatic rifles aimed at him by 
the guards on the far side. A renewed fusillade of gunfire hammered against the 
bows of the landing craft and Hector found himself staring through the narrow 
eye-slit in the frontal armour directly into the blazing enemy muzzles.

He was forced to run this gauntlet for only a few more seconds before he 
crashed the landing craft headlong into the fifteen-foot-high gates of hewn 
timber. The huge gates were unable to resist the charge of the massive 
steel-hulled vehicle. They imploded in a welter of planks and splinters, and 
came crashing down on the stone cobbles of the inner courtyard. The three 
riflemen standing behind them and firing through the gun slits were crushed by 
their weight.

The landing craft climbed over the wreckage and roared into the courtyard. 
Hector brought it to a standstill in the centre of the open square. The two 
surviving guards deserted their posts on either side of the demolished doors, 
and ran back towards the staircase leading into the great hall of the main 
castle building.

Hector stood up quickly in the turret and fired two quick bursts. The first man 
went down in a heap at the foot of the staircase and lay without twitching. The 
second one made it to the top of the staircase before Hector swung onto him and 
hit him with a full burst. He arched his body as the string of bullets stitched 
across the back of his camouflage jacket. Then he collapsed and rolled down the 
stairs, coming to a stop beside his fallen comrade, both of them motionless.

Hector had a fleeting sense of relief that although Emma in Houston might have 
witnessed the swift execution on her cameras, she would not have been able to 
share the images with Jo Stanley in the Condor. The two of them were only 
communicating by shortwave radio. Jo had already endured sufficient to overload 
her delicate susceptibilities.

‘Paddy, did you copy Jo’s transmissions?’

‘Every word.’

‘I am going after Johnny and Carl.’

‘Okay, Heck.’

‘Take your team up and sort out those fifteen goons on the battlements. They 
won’t stay up there much longer. They might even be coming down to take us 
on. But most likely they are already running for the trees like their comrades 
down on the plain.’

‘Leave them to me,’ Paddy said and snapped an order at the surviving 
members of his team crouching behind the steel side of the landing craft. ‘On 
me, lads!’ They jumped to their feet.

Hector shot a quick grin at Nastiya. ‘As for you, my lethal tsarina, don’t 
be greedy. Leave some pickings for the rest of us.’

She flashed him one of her haughty glances. ‘Crazy man, Cross. Nonsense you 
must always talk me, like I am baby.’ Under stress Nastiya’s English 
diction crumbled around the edges, and she tended to dispense with all articles 
and prepositions in the Russian manner.

She turned and vaulted over the side of the craft, landing just behind Paddy. 
The two of them led the Black Team at a run towards the foot of the staircase 
where the dead men lay.

Again Hector spoke into his Birkin mike. ‘Jo, please ask Emma if she is able 
to give me another fix on Johnny and Carl. Please note that I said please.’ 
He made a small peace offering.

‘Please hold on a moment, Hector, and please note I responded in kind.’ 
There was a trace of a smile in her voice, and she had used his given name. She 
came back swiftly. ‘Hector, Emma has them on camera. They have descended to 
level Bravo, beneath the main kitchens and storage cellars. They are in the 
passageway at Bravo Tango 05, moving along it in an easterly direction towards 
the small postern gate that comes out above the lake. There are still five of 
them in the group.’

‘Thank you, Jo Stanley. We are in pursuit. Standing by.’

‘Don’t mention it, Hector Cross. Standing by.’ At least it was a truce, 
if not a full peace agreement. Hector brushed it out of his mind. He jumped 
down from the landing craft and led his team into the castle.

*

Immediately as he entered the great hall Hector picked up the blood trail. But 
there was only a light speckling of drops across the glazed tiles. Johnny would 
have stemmed the flow with a tourniquet.

‘Good!’ Hector thought as he followed it. ‘I don’t want the poisonous 
little swine to bleed to death before I can get my hands on him.’

Even though Emma had told them that the way down into the dungeons was clear, 
they fell naturally into the follow-up procedure that was second nature to 
them. While Hector went forward with a stick of four men, Paul and his stick 
took cover behind them and screened their advance. When Hector reached a secure 
vantage point he went to ground and he signalled Paul forward. They 
leap-frogged swiftly across the great hall and started down the circular 
stairway that led into the dungeons. When the leading stick reached each 
successive landing they paused, and allowed the following team to take over the 
lead from them. They went down through the kitchen area, and kept on down the 
stairway until they came out at last into the maze of the dungeons.

When they paused there they heard the far-off echo of gunfire coming down to 
them from the castle battlements high above. It lasted only a short while 
before the heavy silence fell again.

‘Emma reports that Paddy made contact with the hostiles on the 
battlements,’ Jo told Hector over the Birkin. ‘Paddy has dispersed them and 
cleared the area. The survivors have fled in disarray. Your rear area is 
secured, Hector.’

‘Thank you, Jo.’ Hector suppressed that last residue of his resentment 
towards her. ‘Please relay this to Paddy. He is to follow us into the 
dungeons and try to catch up with us as soon as possible. I might need his 
support.’

‘Roger that, Hector!’

‘Now please give me an update on my own position.’

Hector had a clear plan of this area in his head from studying the 
architectural drawings that Ronnie Bunter and Jo had obtained from Andrew 
Moorcroft. However, they were now fifty feet below ground level and there was 
not a glimmer of light in this labyrinth of stone. Hector had no reference 
points to relate to his mental map. He dared not forewarn the enemy of his 
position by switching on the headlamp that was built into his Kevlar helmet.

He could only scan the way ahead through the black light which was built into 
the optical sight of his weapon. With it he could pick up the fluorescent glow 
of the blood trail that Carl had left on the stone cobbles. Finally this 
petered out, but Johnny and the men with him had Carl’s blood on the soles of 
their boots and they left smudges of it on the stone flooring slabs for Hector 
to follow.

In the utter darkness his men had closed up behind Hector, keeping contact with 
him and with each other by a hand on the shoulder of the man ahead.

At her computer in Houston Emma could follow their advance with the cameras she 
had placed in the dungeons. Each of these contained an infrared eye that 
clearly reflected the heat emitted by a human body. Through the same device she 
could also see exactly where Johnny’s band were at any time.

Jo’s whisper in Hector’s earpiece pinpointed his position for him and 
directed him forward. They gained so rapidly on Johnny that now they could see 
the beams of his flashlight reflected off the walls of the tunnel ahead of them.

Then suddenly even that glimmering of light was snuffed out.

‘Bad news from Emma.’ Jo spoke softly in Hector’s ear. ‘She reports 
that Johnny has reached the funk hole, and disappeared into it. Emma has lost 
all contact with them.’

Hector knew of the existence of the funk hole, so he had been expecting this to 
happen. Nevertheless he felt a flutter of dismay in his guts. They knew nothing 
about the interior design of the funk hole. Carl and Johnny had built it only 
after Emma had left Kazundu. Therefore she had not been asked to set up her 
cameras inside the area. Of course, Emma had overheard Carl and Johnny 
discussing its construction. That was how she knew the name they had given it. 
She had listened as they had planned it as their refuge of last resort.

She had even been able to follow the progress of the actual work. One of her 
cameras was fortuitously placed in such a position that it overlooked the 
stretch of wall through which Carl and Johnny had excavated the entrance into 
the bunker.

Judging only by the time it had taken to construct it, and by the amount of 
earth the workmen had removed, it was obvious that the funk hole must be 
extensive. Once the work was completed, Emma had been able to watch as the 
entrance to the bunker was elaborately disguised. However, all that lay beyond 
that door was still a mystery.

‘Okay, Paul.’ Hector spoke in a normal conversational voice. ‘They have 
gone to ground behind the secret door. We can switch on headlamps now. They 
won’t be able to see the light.’ They all blinked in the sudden 
illumination after the darkness.

Hector led them forward again. The soft rubber soles of their combat boots made 
only a whisper of sound on the stone floor. As Hector rounded the next corner 
in the tunnel he came to what looked like a dead end. He saw tiny droplets of 
Carl’s blood leading up to the base of the blank wall. He went forward to 
stand in front of the wall and he examined it closely. He ran one hand lightly 
over the masonry.

Jo’s voice in his earpiece relayed the instructions she was receiving from 
Houston. ‘Emma is watching you. She wants you to move about two feet to your 
right. Do you see a smaller triangular block of blue stone just below your eye 
line? Okay, push it in hard. Use the butt of your palm. Put your weight on it 
and feel for it to give. That’s great! Now, still holding the pressure, twist 
it anti-clockwise.’

As Hector followed these instructions he realized that Emma had often watched 
Carl or Johnny carrying out this procedure.

Now he felt the block of stone revolve reluctantly under his hand. There was 
the muffled sound of a locking mechanism releasing within the stonework. Then 
an entire section of masonry pivoted ponderously on a concealed fulcrum. It 
swung aside to reveal a green painted door.

Hector leaned forward and touched the door. He knew at once that it was metal 
and not wood. He tapped its surface lightly with his fingertips, judging its 
resonance.

This was not anything like armoured high-grade chromium stainless steel; the 
type of material that the doors to bank vaults are made from. It was a 
low-grade mild steel. The welding was crudely executed, especially around the 
hinges. It had probably been done by local workmen in Kigoma, across the lake.

‘Silly boy, Johnny Congo,’ he said softly. ‘You are old enough to know 
that cheap can be very expensive. This bit of slipshod workmanship might just 
cost you your life.’

‘I could not copy that, Hector. Repeat, please,’ Jo said.

‘I said, happy days are here again.’ Hector grinned to himself. Then he 
beckoned for Paul to come to him.

Two of Paul’s men were each carrying a 10kg shaped demolition charge for this 
very situation. It took Hector less than five minutes to lay the charges to 
their best advantage against the hinges of the green door.

He ordered his men back behind the bend in the tunnel and followed them, paying 
out the electrical cable from its reel as he went. His men had already adopted 
the firing position, kneeling with their backs towards the explosives and both 
hands covering their ears.

Hector clipped the terminals of the cable to a twelve-volt battery pack. That 
was all the power required to ignite the primers.

‘Fire in the hole,’ he warned them and triggered the charge.

The conical shape of the charge concentrated most of the force of the 
explosives into the metal of the door. The shock wave was relatively mild as it 
swept over them.

Then they were on their feet and charging back to the entrance of the funk 
hole. Through the pall of dust they saw that the heavy metal door had been 
lifted off its hinges and hurled against the facing wall of the tunnel.

Hector looked down a flight of steps into the interior of the funk hole. 
Electric lights were still burning in the ceiling of the first cell that he 
could see into.

He was carrying one of the M84 flash-bang grenades in his right hand and the 
machine pistol in his left. With his teeth he pulled the pin on the flash-bang 
and hurled it down into the bunker. The flash-bang is designed to temporarily 
blind and deafen its victims, and to confuse and disorientate them. The blast 
disturbs the fluid in the semi-circular canals of their ears to the extent that 
they lose their coordination and sense of balance.

Hector ducked back out of the opening and crouched down, turning his head away, 
covering his ears and closing his eyes tightly. Even through his closed eyelids 
he saw the 2.4 million candlepower flash of the explosion and his ears sang 
with tinnitus as he jumped to his feet again. He found that his coordination 
was unimpaired as he dashed down the steps into the funk hole with his finger 
resting lightly on the trigger of the machine pistol. He heard Paul coming down 
close behind him.

At the foot of the steps he found a large sparsely furnished antechamber. There 
were three men in the room, all of them Kazundian guards in motley uniform. 
They had lost their weapons and were rolling about on the floor. Their eyes 
were out of focus. One of them was trying to get to his feet, but collapsing 
again with vertigo.

Hector would not waste a bullet on them. He knew he would need every single 
round when at last he confronted Johnny Congo.

‘Take care of them, Paul,’ he ordered without looking back over his 
shoulder. Across the floor in front of him he saw the sprinkling of the blood 
trail that Carl Bannock had left. It led through the open doorway into the room 
beyond. With three quick strides he crossed the antechamber, flattened himself 
against the jamb and then shot a quick glance around it.

Carl Bannock lay huddled on the floor of the inner bunker. A gale of emotion 
swept through Hector’s senses, carrying all reason before it. At last the man 
who had murdered Hazel was completely at his mercy. His vision narrowed, 
leaving only a narrow funnel of light, at the end of which was Carl Bannock’s 
loathsome countenance.

Carl’s face was contorted with terror. His eyes were wide, staring back at 
Hector. His mouth lolled open as he tried to speak, but no sound came, and 
saliva drooled over his lips.

Hector passed through the doorway and went slowly towards him. Carl’s 
shattered legs were twisted under him. They were wrapped in crude bandages 
through which the blood had soaked. He lifted both his hands towards Hector in 
a gesture of supplication. Hector tried to say something to him, but his hatred 
was a thick bitter paste in his mouth that clogged his throat.

Then Hector heard a whisper of sound behind him, and his reason returned to him 
in full strength. He realized that he had made a fatal error, and that he had 
placed himself in mortal danger. He ducked and spun around, lifting the machine 
pistol and pointing it at the source of the sound.

A steel door was sliding across the opening through which he had passed a 
moment before, cutting him off from Paul and his men in the antechamber.

He knew then that he was facing the wrong way. The danger was behind him. He 
began to turn back to face it. He was too late.

Something hit him with the weight and force of a speeding steam locomotive. It 
lifted him off his feet and hurled him head-first into the steel door.

Even though his Kevlar flak jacket had absorbed most of the shock of impact, it 
felt as though his spinal cord had snapped. The air was driven out of his lungs 
like a ruptured bellows. The machine pistol spun out of his grip and clattered 
away into the corner of the room. His ears were ringing from the force with 
which his head had hit the steel door. Without the Kevlar battle helmet to 
cushion it, his skull would have been crushed like the shell of a pigeon’s 
egg.

Despite the pain he managed to stay on his feet, and turn back to meet the next 
onslaught.

Johnny Congo was coming at him again. His face was contorted with a berserker 
rage. Up until this moment Hector had only seen him at a distance, but now he 
realized that he had underestimated his size by half. Johnny was a giant of a 
man. He towered over Hector. His torso and limbs were massive. But he was fast, 
very much faster than Hector had expected such an enormous man could be. He 
charged at Hector again.

He lowered his head as he came. Hector saw that the top of his shaven skull was 
laced with a pattern of scars. Hector recognized this as the trademark of a 
head-butter. He knew that Johnny would use his head as a lethal weapon, but he 
realized that he did not have time or space in which to avoid his rush. Hector 
dropped his own head and met Johnny full on. The tops of their heads clashed 
together. However, the battle helmet saved Hector again, absorbing some of the 
intensity of the impact; still he was stunned by the shock. The steel door at 
his back prevented him from being knocked off his feet.

Hector knew Johnny would come again, and that he could not survive another 
onslaught. He was outmatched in weight, height and strength. He knew that his 
only chance was to take the fight to Johnny. He used the steel door at his back 
as a springboard and launched himself from it.

With his full weight and impetus behind the blow, he swung his right fist into 
Johnny’s face. He felt the cartilage of Johnny’s nose collapse under his 
bunched knuckles, and saw the blood jet out of his nostrils in two bright 
streams.

Johnny seemed to have barely noticed the blow. He shook his head and came 
straight back at Hector. But he had given Hector the split second he needed to 
draw the heavy trench knife from its sheath on his right thigh. He tried to 
level the ten-inch blade of razor steel at Johnny’s chest. But Johnny’s 
long bare arms locked around him, like the coils of a giant boa constrictor. 
The glossy black muscles bunched and hardened into ropes of steel as he began 
to squeeze.

Hector’s knife arm was pinned to his side. The point of the blade was aimed 
at the floor, and Hector found that he did not have the remaining strength to 
raise it. His left arm was trapped against his own chest.

He found his strength receding swiftly as Johnny wrung the life out of him like 
dishwater from a wet rag. The fingers of Hector’s right hand opened of their 
own volition. The trench knife dropped from them and clattered on the floor 
between his feet. He felt Johnny lift him off his feet as though he were a 
child. The great arms tightened around him like an auto-crusher machine 
compressing the body of an old car. Hector felt his ribs beginning to collapse. 
He could no longer breathe and his vision began to fade out.

Then through the agony and the darkness he felt a small hard lump under the 
fingers of his left hand which was still remorselessly locked to his chest. He 
realized what it was he was touching. He summoned the last kernel of his waning 
strength. With one numb finger he prised open the Velcro fastener of the pocket 
in the front of his flak jacket and touched the Hypnos syringe that lay within. 
Almost of its own accord his thumb moved to pinch the tiny green tube against 
his forefinger, and to flip open the cover that protected the hypodermic 
needle. Now his vision had gone completely, but in the despairing darkness he 
found the strength for one last effort. He rolled the wrist of his left hand. 
He felt the tiny pressure as the point of the needle touched something.

He did not know what it was, but he probed the needle into it and squeezed. 
Then he blacked out completely.

*

When he opened his eyes again he thought that he had been unconscious for hours 
or even days. Then his nostrils filled with the wild animal stench of Johnny 
Congo’s sweat and he felt his great inert weight bearing down on top of him, 
pinning him to the ground. He drew a deep breath and then rolled out from under 
Johnny’s body. He sat up groggily. Only then did he realize that he had been 
unconscious for seconds rather than hours.

He looked down at Johnny’s body and saw that the needle of the Hypnos syringe 
was still buried in the great muscles of his forearm. Johnny was snoring loudly 
through his open mouth.

Hector heard a scrabbling sound behind him. He turned towards it and saw that 
Carl Bannock was on his elbows, dragging his lower body across the stone slabs 
towards him. His crippled legs were slithering along behind him. In his right 
hand he held the trench knife that Hector had been forced to drop. His 
expression was as mad and ferocious as that of a rabid dog.

Hector rose to his feet. Carl reared up and threw the knife at him. It was a 
pathetically inadequate gesture. The knife struck Hector’s flak jacket 
hilt-first and dropped to his feet. Hector stepped over it. He walked slowly to 
stand over Carl, looking down at him.

‘Carl Bannock, I presume?’ Hector asked quietly, but there was a world of 
menace in his tone. Carl’s bravado collapsed, and he cowered before Hector, 
sullen and silent. Hector kicked one of his wounded limbs. It flexed at the 
shattered joint and Carl screamed.

‘I asked you a question,’ Hector reminded him.

‘Please don’t hurt me again,’ Carl whimpered. ‘Yes. Yes. You know I am 
Carl Bannock.’

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Yes. I know who you are. Please don’t hurt me.’

‘Who am I?’ Hector insisted, and kicked his leg a second time. Carl 
screamed again.

‘You are hurting me,’ he blubbered. ‘You are Hector Cross.’

‘Do you know why I have come to find you?’

‘I am sorry. I would change everything if it were in my power. I didn’t 
mean to cause you pain. I am not a bad person. It is all a dreadful mistake. I 
beg your forgiveness.’

‘How do you open that door?’ Hector jerked his head towards the steel door 
behind him.

‘I think that Johnny has the remote control in his pocket.’ Hector went 
back to where Johnny lay snoring on his back. He stooped over him and patted 
his pockets. He found the opener, and he pointed it at the door and pressed the 
button. The door hissed as it ran back in its guide channels.

Paddy and Nastiya were waiting on the far side, but they pushed their way 
through the opening as soon it was wide enough to admit them. Paddy’s voice 
was rough with worry and agitation as he demanded of Hector, ‘Are you all 
right, Heck?’

‘I couldn’t be more all right, my old son,’ Hector told him.

‘I see you have hit the big bastard with the Hypnos needle.’ Paddy looked 
down at Johnny.

‘They work just like Dave said they would. I think he went belly up while I 
was still squeezing the tube.’ Hector nodded. ‘But now we have to work 
fast. We have to get out of here before the enemy regroup. Did you bring the 
cable ties?’

‘No worry, mate.’

‘Then give them to Paul. Have him and his boys truss Johnny up good and 
tight.’ Hector touched his bruised and aching chest. ‘He is the most 
dangerous man I have ever met. He is strong as a bloody bull buffalo. I was 
like a baby in his hands.’

‘Why take any more chances? Let’s just cancel him out here and now.’ 
Nastiya reached for the holstered pistol on her hip.

‘Don’t be so soft-hearted, Nazzy. That would be much too kind and easy.’ 
Hector shook his head. ‘I am planning something really special for him. On 
our way home we’re going to dump him out through the rear ramp of the Condor 
at twenty-five thousand feet. He will have two minutes of free-fall in which to 
repent his sins before he hits the ground.’

‘Beautiful!’ Nastiya applauded the idea. ‘This is the old Hector 
speaking. The one we all know and love.’

‘Paul, get in here with a couple of your lads,’ Hector called, and as they 
came through the door he pointed at one of the heavy teak chairs that stood 
against the side wall. ‘Strap him onto that. We will use it as a casevac 
stretcher on which to carry him down to the airfield. The bastard must weigh 
well over three hundred pounds. But the chair looks sturdy enough to hold 
him.’

As they dragged the chair to where Johnny lay and lifted him into it, Hector 
turned his full attention back to Carl.

‘This is the first prize,’ he told Paddy and Nastiya. ‘This is the only 
man I know of who has murdered his own father, his mother, his stepmother and 
both his half-sisters. He has wiped out his entire family.’

‘Worst of all, this piece of stinking excrement was the one who killed my 
best friend Hazel.’ Nastiya glared down at him. ‘Also he was trying to kill 
our baby Cathy. That I don’t like too very much.’

‘But we must give him credit for one thing,’ Hector pointed out. ‘He is 
an animal lover. He is especially fond of pigs and crocodiles; isn’t that the 
truth, Carl? You love to feed them, don’t you, Carl?’

Carl stared at Hector dumbly, but gradually the agony in his eyes gave way to 
terror as he realized in which direction Hector was heading.

‘No!’ Carl whispered, shaking his head. ‘Please don’t talk like that. I 
will give you everything I have. Money? Do you want money? I can give you sixty 
million dollars.’

‘There is not enough money in this world, Carl,’ Hector told him 
regretfully and he turned back as Paul Stowe finished strapping Johnny’s huge 
carcass into the chair.

‘You will need all the men with you to help you to carry this great lump of 
lard down to the airfield. However, he won’t wake up for another three hours 
so you shouldn’t have too much trouble with him. Paddy, Nastiya and I will 
take Carl Bannock where he is going. We will probably catch up with you before 
you reach the Condor, but if we don’t then load Johnny on board and have the 
pilots wait for us. We won’t be far behind you.’ He slapped Paul’s 
shoulder. ‘Away with you, then!’

He waited while they manhandled the improvised stretcher through the 
antechamber and up the stairs into the tunnel. Then he went back to where Carl 
lay.

‘What are the names of your pet crocodiles, Carl? Please remind me.’

‘No, you can’t do this to me. Listen to me. I can explain. You don’t 
understand. I had to do it. Sacha and Bryoni were the ones who sent me to 
prison. My father deserted me, and so did my mother.’ He was gabbling 
incoherently, a rush of jumbled words. At the same time he was weeping and 
holding up his hands to Hector. ‘Mercy! Please have mercy. I’ve suffered 
enough. Look at my legs. I’ll never walk again.’

‘Hannibal, that’s it!’ Hector snapped his fingers as he pretended to 
remember. ‘Hannibal and Aline. Shall we go down into the gardens and you can 
introduce us to Hannibal and Aline?’

Suddenly Jo Stanley’s voice spoke over the radio. It was shrill with outrage. 
‘Hector, I am copying every word of yours. You cannot do this thing you are 
planning. No matter how guilty he is, you cannot kill him out of hand. You will 
be sinking to his level. You will be committing a crime against all the laws of 
God and man. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. What you are contemplating is 
savage and barbaric.’

Hector spoke into his mike and his voice was crisp and sharp as he replied. 
‘Sorry, Jo darling. We are very busy this end. Can’t talk now. Over and 
out!’ He switched off his Birkin and gestured to Paddy to do the same. Once 
they were both off the air he said to Paddy, ‘Let’s stop fiddling about, 
and get the job finished.’ He grabbed Carl’s wrist and twisted it up 
between his shoulder blades. Paddy did the same with his other arm. Nastiya 
squatted down and with a cable tie bound Carl’s hands behind his back.

Then the two men lifted Carl onto his knees and dragged him up the stairs into 
the tunnel. Nastiya followed them, carrying their weapons.

They carried Carl through the labyrinth with his legs swinging under him. Carl 
kept babbling out his remorse and supplications for forgiveness and mercy, 
interspersed with shrieks of agony as his dragging feet caught and one of his 
legs twisted violently, bone grating on bone.

They reached the postern gate and emerged from it. Once more in the sunlight 
they paused to catch their breath and gaze about them. Hector looked up at the 
walls of the castle high above them. The tunnel leading out of the dungeons had 
burrowed under them and they were now in the gardens.

‘You and Johnny have done a great job here,’ Hector congratulated Carl. 
‘You have turned this place into a paradise. What a pity that you won’t be 
around to enjoy it much longer.’

The airfield lay below them and they could see Paul and his men carrying Johnny 
down the winding road towards it.

They turned away and followed the contour of the hillside until they rounded a 
buttress of black volcanic rock and the water gardens opened out ahead of them. 
The fountains wove creaming patterns of spray against the high blue of the 
African sky. And the waterfalls cascaded down the black rock face, spilling 
into the pools and subterranean funnels on their return to the great lake that 
lay like a gleaming silver shield far below where they stood.

They went on through stands of giant ferns and strelitzia, festooned with 
exotic blossoms the colour and shape of birds of paradise. At last they reached 
the stone coping around the top of the crocodile pen. Carl Bannock’s cries of 
pain and his pleas for mercy and forgiveness dried up as Hector and Paddy laid 
him over the coping on his belly. Paddy held his legs to prevent him toppling 
head-first over the wall and falling twenty feet into the green pool below. 
Hector leaned over the coping beside him.

On the sandbank that curved around the far edge of the green pool the two 
crocodiles were sunning themselves. Hannibal’s huge jaws were opened to their 
full gape to allow a small white egret to perch on his lower lip and peck 
greedily at the shiny black leeches that had fastened themselves to his gums. 
Aline lay close beside him, as motionless as though she were carved from stone. 
Her eyes were bright and as implacable as polished onyx behind their 
transparent nictitating eyelids.

‘Have you ever wondered what your sister experienced as she was being eaten 
alive by animals, Carl?’ Hector asked quietly. Carl made a choking sound. 
‘Well, you are about to find out, aren’t you?’ Hector went on. ‘Do you 
know what it feels like to lose somebody you love, Carl?’ Then he answered 
his own question. ‘No, of course you don’t. You have never loved anybody 
but yourself.

‘I know what it feels like. I lost my wife. You knew my wife, didn’t you, 
Carl? Yes, of course you did. I want you to tell me my wife’s name.’ Carl 
was silent and Hector glanced back at Paddy.

‘We have to jog his memory, Paddy. Give his leg a twist, please.’ Paddy 
twisted hard and Carl screamed.

‘Let’s start again, Carl,’ Hector said. ‘What was my wife’s name?’

‘Hazel. Her name was Hazel.’

‘Thank you, Carl. Now please don’t say anything more. I want that name to 
be the last word you ever utter.’ Hector nodded at Paddy and he seized 
Carl’s ankles and lifted them high, tipping him head-first over the edge of 
the wall. Carl hit the water and went under. He came up again spluttering and 
choking.

On the sandbank Hannibal snapped his jaws closed and the egret rose shrieking 
into the air and flapped away across the tops of the strelitzias. Hannibal 
hoisted his vast bulk up onto his stubby legs and waddled to the edge of the 
pool. He launched himself into the turbid water. Aline followed him closely.

‘Does this make you feel better, Hector?’ Nastiya asked as they watched the 
carnage from above.

‘No, Nazzy. Nothing will ever make me feel better. Nothing will ever still 
the ache deep down inside of me.’ He stepped back from the wall and turned 
away. The other two fell in on either side of him, and all three of them broke 
into a run and went down the hill to where the Condor stood at the head of the 
runway, ready for take-off.

Bernie and Nella saw them coming and started the engines of the Condor. Then 
they taxied the huge machine up the ramp of the protective laager and stopped 
at the head of the runway.

*

As soon as the trio mounted the loading ramp and were safely in the cargo hold 
of the Condor, Bernie raised the ramp and Nella called over the PA system, 
‘Welcome back on board, Hector. Please find the nearest seat and get yourself 
strapped in. We are going for an immediate take-off.’

Hector led the way forward and as he entered the pressurized passage 
compartment he saw that it was crowded. There were three body bags containing 
the corpses of the men they had lost laid out on the deck. Beside them were the 
casevac stretchers with the wounded strapped into them. The mountainous bulk of 
Johnny Congo was still strapped into the teak chair with his head lolling on 
his chest. Paul Stowe had taken the precaution of covering him with a nylon 
cargo net.

‘I didn’t want to take a chance, sir. I didn’t want him to wake up and 
wreck the plane and all of us in it. But even a bull elephant wouldn’t be 
able to break out of that net.’

‘Good man!’ Hector voiced his approval.

‘I kept those seats for you at the front of the cabin.’ He pointed forward.

‘Where is Jo Stanley?’ Hector asked him.

‘I think she is in the galley, in the jump seat behind the toilet.’

The Condor took off and turned onto a northerly heading. They climbed up 
through the cloud cover to cruise altitude, and Bernie switched off the 
seat-belt sign. As soon as this happened Hector stood up and went through the 
curtains into the galley. Jo was sitting alone in the jump seat beside the 
window. She looked wan and melancholy. She looked up at him and he smiled at 
her. She turned her head away to stare out of the window. He pulled down the 
jump seat beside her and sat down.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Don’t you feel like talking?’

‘Not particularly,’ she answered, still without looking at him.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said and folded his arms. They sat for a while, and it 
was Jo who broke the silence.

‘I never want to hear what you did to him.’

‘Who are we discussing? Is it the man who murdered Hazel, and who plotted the 
murder of Catherine Cayla?’

She did not reply, but continued staring out the window. Then he realized she 
was weeping. He touched her shoulder gently, but she pulled away from his hand.

‘Please go away and leave me alone,’ she sobbed.

‘Do you mean go away, as in go away for ever?’

‘Yes!’ she said and he stood up and started back towards the passenger 
cabin.

‘No!’ She stopped him. ‘Don’t go.’

He stopped and turned back to face her. ‘Yes or no? What is it to be, Jo?’

‘You murdered him.’

‘Murdered or executed? Our world often hangs on the precise meaning of a 
single word, Jo.’

‘You did not have the right, Hector! You went far beyond law and decency.’

‘What law are we discussing, Jo? Is it the law of Al-Qisas, the law of 
retaliation laid down in the Torah in Exodus and endorsed by the Prophet 
Muhammad in the Koran?’

‘I am talking about the law of America, the law which I practise and hold 
dear.’ She was still weeping, and he had to steel himself to oppose her.

‘Yet you call me a murderer. You have judged me already, but the law of 
America which you practise says that I am innocent until you prove me guilty.’

‘Yes, there is doubt. But you are going to kill Johnny Congo next. I 
overheard you boasting about it on the radio. If you do that, Hector, I will 
never be able to bring myself to forgive you. I will never be able to stay with 
you.’

‘You want me to turn Congo loose? Is that what you are asking me to do?’

‘I did not say that.’ She denied it vehemently. ‘I want you to surrender 
him to the law. Hand him over to the American justice system, which has already 
proven him guilty and passed sentence upon him.’

She jumped to her feet and seized both his hands. ‘Please, Hector! Please, my 
darling, for my sake. No, do this for both our sakes. Then we can go on 
together.’

He stared into her eyes for a long time, before he nodded stiffly. ‘Very 
well, then.’ But his lips were tight, and his voice was tortured with the 
effort it cost him to say it. ‘I give Johnny Congo to you as the proof of my 
love. Do with him as you will.’

*

The US Justice Department sent a Grumman business jet from Washington DC to Abu 
Zara international airport. There were four US Marshals on board with a warrant 
for the arrest and detention of John Congo.

By royal dispensation, the handover took place in the hangar in which the Emir 
of Abu Zara kept his fleet of private aircraft.

The American Marshals were all big athletic-looking men with cropped 
hairstyles. They were lined up before the open fuselage door of the Grumman. 
They wore dark civilian suits, but Hector’s practised eye noticed the bulges 
in their left armpits made by the holstered sidearms they carried. He saw the 
distinctive shape of the steel toe-caps in their polished black shoes.

These are a bunch of tough cookies, Hector decided as with Paddy and eight of 
the Cross Bow operatives they marched Johnny into the hangar. Johnny shuffled 
along in leg irons and his arms were secured behind his back with steel 
handcuffs. The handover was quick and unceremonious. The head Marshal handed 
Hector an official US Government receipt, then shook his hand and murmured a 
few words of thanks. He nodded at his colleagues and two of them stepped 
forward and seized Johnny’s elbows. They dragged him towards the open door of 
the jet.

Suddenly Johnny turned and started back to confront Hector. Despite the 
handcuffs and the leg irons, the two burly Marshals were unable to restrain 
him. Johnny dragged them along with him. He was bellowing a stream of such 
filthy language as impressed even Hector and his hard-boiled Cross Bow 
operatives.

He came straight at Hector. His nose was still swollen and distorted from the 
punch that Hector had given him.

‘It was me gave the order to kill your fucking whore wife…’ he shouted, 
and he was close enough for Hector to feel his spittle on his cheek. He dropped 
his head to smash it into Hector’s face. Hector was anticipating just this. 
He was balanced on his toes; it was the perfect set-up. He put all his weight 
behind the blow. He knew before he even made contact that it was the best punch 
he had ever thrown. It landed on the precise point of Johnny’s jaw.

Even Johnny’s massive neck muscles could not prevent his head being snapped 
around to the full extent of its rotation. He went down like a black avalanche 
and lay motionless on the hangar floor. There was a sudden and complete 
silence. It was broken by the senior US Marshal.

‘Holy cow, mister. You’re good! That was one of the best shots I’ve ever 
seen,’ he said and came to shake Hector’s hand again, but this time with 
feeling.

‘Take him away, and give him the hot needle,’ Hector told him.

‘That is the plan, sir,’ the Marshal agreed.

Five days later Hector received a phone call from Ronnie Bunter to let him know 
that the new date that had been set by the high court for Johnny Congo’s 
execution was 15 October, three weeks ahead.

*

The threat to Catherine Cayla’s life had been completely removed at last. 
They could return to normal life. Hector and Jo took Catherine and her nurses 
with them when they left Abu Zara and flew back to London.

The mews house was perfect and London was even better. There were restaurants 
and clubs that Jo had only read about, so she had to be educated. She had very 
few clothes with her, so they did not need an excuse to go shopping for her in 
Bond Street and Sloane Street. Jo had never even held a fly rod in her hand 
before. She had heard about Atlantic salmon, but as a Texan she had never seen 
one.

Hector drove Jo and Catherine Cayla north to Scotland, where they spent three 
days as the guests of a noble duke at his castle on the Tay river.

Jo and Catherine watched from the bank as Hector waded out waist deep into the 
river, and Spey cast with a fifteen-foot rod.

That evening, while they were changing into black tie and dinner dress, Jo gave 
her opinion of his day’s performance. ‘It’s very beautiful to watch. 
It’s like a ballet, so graceful and skilled.’

‘So tomorrow I will teach you to Spey cast,’ he offered.

‘No thank you,’ she declined. ‘It’s pretty but it does seem rather a 
plentiful waste of time.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ he demanded.

‘Well, you didn’t catch any fish, did you?’

‘It’s not the catching that’s important, it is the fishing in itself.’

‘It all sounds a bit daft to me,’ she said. It was heresy, but Hector let 
it pass. The rift between Jo and himself was now healed and forgotten, and he 
was happy. He did not want to open it again.

By the third day the two girls had lost interest in the proceedings. Jo had her 
book and Catherine had her dolls. When those palled they went for short walks, 
holding hands and telling each other wonderful stories that neither of them 
understood. When Catherine tired, Jo carried her on her hip, and Catherine 
tried to make Jo share her dummy with her.

They returned from one of these walks to find Hector still in the middle of the 
river, but now he was no longer casting and his rod was bent almost double. He 
was uttering strange cries that really caught their attention. They stood hand 
in hand and watched with curiosity. Then the salmon jumped. It erupted out of 
the water, bright silver in the sunlight, and fell back with a mighty splash. 
The two girls shrieked with sudden excitement.

Fifteen minutes later Hector waded ashore carrying a gorgeous twenty-pound 
salmon in the landing net. He laid it on the grassy verge, and removed the hook 
from its lip. Then he lifted it out of the net and, holding it gently in two 
hands, offered it to Catherine to touch. She hurriedly removed her thumb from 
her mouth and pressed her face into Jo’s bosom.

Hector looked at Jo. ‘What about you? Would you like to touch a real live 
Scottish salmon?’

Jo thought about the offer for less than a second and then she shook her head. 
‘Perhaps next time,’ she said.

Still carrying the fish, Hector went back into the river. He held the fish up 
and kissed its wet cold nose, and then he lowered it into the water and held 
its head facing into the current. It lay quiescent in his hands for a while, 
pumping its gills, recovering its balance and its will to live. Then it shot 
away into the tea-coloured waters.

That night after they had made love and were settling down to sleep in each 
other’s arms, she whispered drowsily, ‘You are a strange man, Hector Cross. 
You kill men without the least compunction. On the other hand you go to 
infinite pain and expense to haul a fish out of the water, and then you let it 
go again.’

‘I only kill those who deserve to die,’ he replied. ‘That fish had twenty 
thousand eggs in her belly. She didn’t deserve to die. She and her babies 
deserved to live.’

The next day they drove back to London. It was a long road and they arrived 
back at The Cross Roads and watched Catherine Cayla devour most of her dinner 
of minced chicken and squash. What she didn’t swallow dribbled off her chin 
onto her bib.

Afterwards they were invited by Bonnie to attend the complicated ritual of 
putting Catherine to bed in the nursery with all her bunnies and teddies 
arranged around her cot in their correct order.

‘But, how do you know the correct order?’ Hector asked.

‘She lets us know,’ Bonnie explained. ‘I know you think we are just 
making noises, but it’s a secret language. You will only learn it if you 
spend more time with us.’ It was a rebuke, and he knew he deserved it.

Later that evening, when Jo had finished her pre-bedtime routine and emerged 
from her bathroom glowing with unguents and redolent and lovely as a spring 
garden, Hector lifted the covers on her side of the bed to make room for her. 
She snuggled down in the circle of his arms making soft comfort sounds, not 
unlike those emitted by Catherine Cayla settling down for sleep.

‘May I consult you on a client–attorney basis before we move on to more 
important matters?’ Hector asked her.

‘You pick the damnedest times, don’t you?’ she murmured. ‘But ask away 
if you must.’

‘If Carl Bannock were dead, then what would happen to the assets of the 
Trust?’ She went silent for a while, and when at last she spoke her tone was 
distant.

‘I have no reason to believe that Carl Bannock is not in blooming health.’ 
She looked him unashamedly in the eye as she made this hypocritical denial, 
then she went on. ‘However, if one were to assert the contrary then the law 
of the State of Texas is quite clear.’ She sat up and hugged her knees, 
considering for a moment before she continued.

‘Any person claiming that Carl was dead must be able to lay before the court 
irrefutable evidence of his death, such as a death certificate issued by a 
medical practitioner or a sworn statement by a credible eye witness of the 
death. Hector, are you able to think of anyone who would be prepared to stand 
up in court and swear under oath that they witnessed the death of Carl 
Bannock?’

‘Not off hand,’ Hector admitted.

‘Well then, failing irrefutable evidence of death, the law states that a 
period of seven years must elapse before interested parties may petition the 
Texas High Court for a Presumption of Death Ruling. Evidence presented to the 
court must show that there has not been any reason to believe the subject is 
still alive, such as a reliable sighting of the subject or any contact with him 
by persons who might reasonably expect such contact. In our case the trustees 
can reasonably expect Carl to contact them to demand the benefits owing to him 
by the Trust, such as quadrupling any funds that he earns on his own behalf. If 
Carl does not do so, it would be strong evidence that he is dead. Are there any 
more questions? Or can we get on with the main business for which we are 
gathered here tonight?’

‘I have no more questions, but I do have just one comment: it’s a bitter 
hard world if my poor helpless little waif has to wait until she is almost 
eight years of age before she can afford to buy her first Ferrari.’

‘Oh! You!’ she exclaimed. She picked up a pillow and hit him with it.

*

Their lovemaking that night was especially intense and satisfying to both Jo 
and Hector. Afterwards he fell into such a deep and dreamless sleep that he did 
not hear Jo leave the bed.

When he woke again he heard her in her bathroom. He checked the bedside clock 
and found it was not yet five a.m. He roused himself and went for a short walk 
to his own bathroom. On his way back to the bed he paused at her door and heard 
her speaking on the phone. She was probably calling her mother in Abilene. 
Sometimes he wondered what they still had to talk about after all these years 
of phoning each other almost every night. He returned to the bed and drifted 
off into sleep once more.

When he woke again it was seven o’clock. Jo was still sequestered in her 
dressing room behind the closed door. Hector put on his dressing gown and went 
to the nursery. He came back to bed with Catherine in his arms, clutching her 
morning bottle. He propped himself up on the pillows, and held her in his lap. 
While she sucked away at the teat of the bottle he became enthralled by her 
face. It seemed that she grew more beautiful, and more like Hazel with every 
passing day.

At last he heard the door to Jo’s dressing room open. When he looked up 
smiling, she was standing in the doorway. The smile slowly faded from his face. 
Jo was fully dressed and she had her small travelling valise in her hand. Her 
expression was sombre.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked, but she ignored the question.

‘Johnny Congo has escaped from prison,’ she said. He stared at her and he 
felt the ice forming around his heart. Jo drew a deep breath before she went on 
speaking. ‘He killed three of his guards and got clean away.’

Hector shook his head in denial. ‘How do you know this?’

‘Ronnie Bunter told me. I have been on the phone to him for half the night, 
discussing it with him.’ She broke off to clear her throat. Then she went on 
softly. ‘You will blame me for this, won’t you, Hector?’

He shook his head, but he could not find the words to deny it. He knew what she 
had said was true.

‘You will go after Johnny Congo again,’ she said with quiet certainty. He 
did not answer her immediately.

‘Do I have any other choice?’ he asked at last, but the question was 
rhetorical.

‘I have to leave you,’ she said.

‘If you truly love me, you will stay,’ he protested, but quietly.

‘No, because I truly love you I must go.’

‘Where to?’

‘Ronnie Bunter has offered to give me back my old job at Bunter and Theobald. 
At least there I can do something to protect Catherine’s interests in the 
trust.’

‘Will you ever come back?’

‘I doubt it.’ She began to weep openly, but she went on speaking through 
the tears. ‘I never imagined there could be any other man like you. But, 
being with you is like living on the slopes of a volcano. One slope faces the 
sun. It is warm, fertile, beautiful and safe there. It is filled with love and 
laughter.’ She broke off to choke back a sob, and then she went on. ‘The 
other slope of you is full of shadows and dark frightening things, like hatred 
and revenge; like anger and death. I would never know when the mountain would 
erupt and destroy itself and me.’

‘If I cannot stop you going, then at least kiss me once before you do.’ But 
she shook her head again.

‘No, if I kiss you it will weaken my resolve, and we will be stuck with each 
other for ever. That must not happen. We were never meant for each other, 
Hector. We would destroy each other.’ She gulped another breath and then she 
looked deeply into his eyes and said, ‘I believe in the law, while you 
believe you are the law. I have to go, Hector. Goodbye, my love.’

He knew in his heart what she had said was true.

She turned her back on him and went out through the door. She closed it softly 
behind her. He listened for the last sounds of her departure but the house 
remained silent.

The only sound was Catherine suckling on the teat of her bottle. He looked down 
at her and said softly, ‘Now it is just you and me, baby.’

Catherine popped the teat out of her mouth. She reached up to his face to touch 
with one chubby pink finger the single tear on his cheek. She had never seen 
anything like that before and her eyes were huge and awed. She said softly but 
clearly, ‘Good man, Baba.’ And he thought his heart might burst.





This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events 
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or 
are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

VICIOUS CIRCLE. Copyright © 2013 by Wilbur Smith. All rights reserved. For 
information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 
10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Wilbur A.

Vicious circle / Wilbur Smith.—1st U.S. Edition.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-250-00031-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-25003762-6 (e-book) I. Title.

PR9405.9.S5V58 2013

823’.914—dc23





2013020529

First published in Great Britain by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a 
division of Macmillan Publishers Limited First U.S. Edition: October 2013

eISBN 9781250037626

First eBook edition: September 2013





Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Begin Reading

Copyright

Other related posts:

• » [ebooktalk] Wilbur smith - David Russelll

1. Home
2. ebooktalk
3. Archive
4. 10-2013

---

• » Previous by Date
• » Next by Date
• » Related Posts
• » View list details
• » Manage your subscription

---