Dictator by Tom Cain Read Free Book Online

That didn’t make tonight’s mission any less difficult, but at least it tilted the chances of success marginally in their favour.
    Once he had satisfied himself that he was in good hands, Carver leaned back in his chair and looked around. Hanging from the rearview mirror were a string of beads, a St Christopher medal and a photograph of a laughing woman with her arms round two small children, a boy and a girl, both in their neat white school shirts.
    ‘Your family?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Justus, the warmth of his smile conveying the love, pride and happiness he felt. ‘That is my wife Nyasha, who has blessed me with her affection for twelve years now, and my son Canaan – he is eight – and my daughter Farayi, who is six.’
    ‘They look like great kids. You’re a lucky man.’
    ‘Yes, I am very, very lucky. Do you have a family, Mr Carver?’
    ‘No, not yet.’
    ‘So you have never found the right woman to take as your wife?’
    Carver grimaced. ‘A couple of times I thought I had. Never quite worked out.’
    ‘That is sad,’ said Justus, shaking his head. ‘To have a good woman who gives him strong, healthy children is the greatest satisfaction a man can have. You know, sometimes when I am tired from working too long, or the jobs I must undertake do not please me, I ask myself, “Why do I do this?” Then I look at that picture and I know. I do it for them.’
    ‘So where do you live?’
    ‘I have a small farm, about twenty miles from Buweku. The country there is very beautiful: rolling hills, so green that my cattle grow as fat as hippos, and with earth so rich that all you have to do is throw seed upon the ground and any crop will grow. I am building a house there. Soon it will be finished. Then I will go to my wife and say, “I have given you many rooms. Now you give me more children to fill them all!” ’
    Carver laughed along with Justus, admiring but also envying the straightforward convictions by which he seemed to lead his life. Carver would probably earn more from this one night’s work than Justus could hope to make in his entire life. But that didn’t make him richer in the things that really mattered.
    He brushed the thought from his mind as if swatting an irritating fly. He had more immediate problems to worry about than his lack of women or kids.
    Justus, too, was getting back to business. He pulled the car up by the side of the road and said, ‘We are getting close to Chitongo and it is most important that no one sees you arrive.’ He turned in his seat and looked towards the rear of the vehicle. ‘Please lie on the floor at the back, Mr Carver. I have provided a blanket to cover you.’
    ‘OK.’
    A minute later they were on the move again, Samuel Carver huddling under an ancient tartan picnic blanket as he was driven into battle.

12
     
    Zalika Stratten had long since lost track of where she was. She thought she’d heard voices a couple of days ago talking in Portuguese. That suggested she might be somewhere in Mozambique. Beyond that, though, this was just another bare mattress shoved into the corner of another room, with another uncovered bucket to squat over. The windows were boarded over and the door in the centre of the wall opposite her mattress was locked, with a guard permanently stationed outside. There was no bulb at the end of the wire that hung from the ceiling. The only light came from the cracks between the planks nailed to the window frame.
    Zalika’s feet were chained together, just far enough apart that she could shuffle across her room, but too close to allow her to walk properly, let alone run. Her jeans and shoes had been taken away and all she had to wear now were the T-shirt and underwear she’d been wearing when she was captured.
    They gave her two meals a day, feeding her on a basic diet of maize-meal porridge, with an occasional treat of salty, bony fried fish, or a meat stew that consisted of a couple of lumps of indeterminate gristle adrift in a