impregnable. He’d be left standing beside it, exposed to God knows how many witnesses’ eyes, behaving like a lunatic and getting precisely nowhere. No, he’d have to bide his time.
Up ahead, Mabeki reached the booth, handed over the forty-five-Hong-Kong-dollar fee and sped away into the tunnel.
The seconds dragged by as Carver sat in the line of cars, his frustration mounting until he too reached the barrier, paid his cash and drove into the tunnel beneath Victoria Harbour. When he emerged on the northwest tip of Hong Kong Island, he was soon caught in the crowds of Sunday day-trippers. The traffic inched down Highway 4 along the island’s northern shore, through the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district and past all the bank headquarters and corporate towers whose lights had flashed so brightly at him and Zalika two nights earlier as they’d stood by the rail of the ferry. Carver thought of her kissing him then looking at him with such tender, loving eyes as she said, ‘You’re a good man, Samuel Carver.’ Well, he wouldn’t be much good if he couldn’t rescue her.
But what was Mabeki doing? Where was he going?
According to the tracker, he’d swung right off Highway 4 and was now heading south again. But then what? When Mabeki reached the south shore of Hong Kong Island there’d be nothing left in front of him but the South China Sea. Within the next three or four miles, Mabeki would come to the end of the line. That, for better or worse, was where everything would be decided. And Mabeki knew it too. Carver could see from the tracker that the Rolls was slowing down; letting Carver close the gap; leading him on. It didn’t take a massively tactical brain to figure out that Mabeki had some kind of plan. Maybe he was hoping to make an exchange: Zalika’s life for his freedom. Or even Carver’s life for Zalika’s.
Forget it. Carver had unfinished business of his own. As long as Mabeki was alive, he and Zalika would never be safe. Killing him was simply a matter of self-defence.
Carver drove past the Happy Valley race track where vast crowds gathered to watch the horses and, far more importantly to a population obsessed by gambling, wager huge sums on the results. Then the road dipped down into another tunnel that ran beneath the hills of the Aberdeen Country Park towards Aberdeen Harbour itself. That made sense. If you looked as horrifically recognizable as Moses Mabeki it was safer to quit Hong Kong on a fishing boat or even one of the speedboats that bobbed on the waters of the Aberdeen Marina than risk the multiple security procedures of an airport.
As Carver emerged from the tunnel and headed into Aberdeen, the Rolls-Royce came into view once again. Mabeki was swinging off the raised highway down a ramp that seemed to lead right into the heart of the great clusters of apartment buildings where the boat people of old had been resettled. From up on the raised highway, Carver could see that the towers were grouped in huge semi-circles and X-shapes, like fortified villages in the sky. He followed Mabeki down the off-ramp and saw his silver quarry up ahead, turning left into a side road. It wouldn’t be long now, Carver was sure of it.
Then he, too, turned left into the shadow of the towers.
71
The street was crowded with cars and people: a few white tourists who’d ventured inland from the scenic harbour-front, but mostly locals bustling purposefully to and fro, or standing in groups, talking and gesticulating with a vehemence and energy that belied the cliched image of Chinese inscrutability.
Mabeki had parked the Rolls-Royce on the left-hand side of the road, about fifty yards ahead. He was standing by it, watching Carver’s Honda crawl towards him, hemmed in by cars and trucks, taunting Carver, challenging him to make the next move.
Carver pulled over to the left, double-parking and ignoring the horn-blasts and shouts from the drivers now half-trapped behind him as he got out of the car and tried to push his way through the crowds towards the Rolls- Royce. Mabeki stood quite still, just staring in Carver’s direction until he’d caught his eye. Then he raised a hand, waved mockingly and walked away, heedless of the fact that he was turning his back on an armed enemy, his tall, twisted figure towering over most of the people around him.
And he walked away alone.
The question ripped through Carver’s mind, driving every other thought from his head: what had Mabeki done with Zalika?
The Rolls-Royce was just ahead of him now, its boot pointing at him. Mabeki had left it unlocked so that it had opened a fraction. If Zalika was in there, she could get out, so why hadn’t she?
He ran through the possible reasons. She was bound and immobile. She was unconscious or even dead. And then it struck him that Mabeki had left him an invitation. ‘Open me,’ the boot seemed to be saying. ‘Open me and see what happens next.’
It would have been so easy for Mabeki to set a booby trap. Carver flashed back to the memory of Justus’s prized VW van: the nylon line and the hand-grenade that had blown when the door was opened. Was that what Mabeki had in store for him now? Or was his real aim simply to buy a little time?
The longer Carver stood around wondering what to do, the further away Mabeki would get.
‘Zalika,’ he called out, ‘are you there? You OK?’
There was no reply.
Carver moved closer to the boot, bent down and peered at the narrow opening, trying to spot any sign of a trap. Oh the hell with it. He’d had enough pussyfooting around. He grabbed the boot, swung it open with one swift movement…
And nothing happened. There was no explosion, no trap… and no Zalika.
But that was impossible. Carver had tracked the signal from her phone all the way from the Gushungos’ house. Mabeki hadn’t stopped at any point in the journey, apart from the delay at the tollbooth by the Western Harbour Tunnel. So where was the girl?
Frantically, irrationally, Carver opened the driver’s door of the Rolls, leaned in and peered into the interior as if there was some faint chance that Zalika might be sitting there. She wasn’t.
But her phone was sitting on the passenger seat. And it was ringing.
Carver picked it up. He pulled himself back out of the car, stood up again and looked down the street, searching for Mabeki, knowing that it would be his voice he heard as he pressed the ‘receive’ button and held the phone to his ear.
‘Goodbye, Reverend,’ said Mabeki. ‘Or rather, goodbye, Mr Carver. You will not see me or Miss Stratten again.’
The phone went dead. Carver hurled it to the ground, anger and frustration getting the better of him. Then he looked up again and the anger was replaced by the chilly realization of imminent danger. There were five men walking abreast across the pavement, barging people out of their way as they made their way towards the Rolls- Royce. But it didn’t take a genius to work out that it wasn’t the car they were aiming for. Mabeki had indeed set a trap for him. And it had just been sprung.
72
Just across the road, Carver saw a grocery store. It was about as basic as a shop could get – a single room, open to the street, with steel shutters at the front that could be drawn across like garage doors at the end of the day. He made his way smartly towards it, aware that he was being followed, the men fanning out behind him to block any possible attempt to run his way out of trouble. The man giving the orders was walking in the middle of the line. He sported a scraggly goatee beard and moustache and was wearing an old olive-green army shirt, unbuttoned over a black vest. He was about thirty yards away now. At a steady walking pace, that gave Carver around fifteen seconds’ start.
As he got closer to the store, Carver saw that a grey-haired old boy was sitting on a white plastic garden- chair to one side of the entrance. In front of him was a waist-high wooden counter. Cardboard boxes were piled
