The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

mentioned it yesterday at Snell’s residence, that he had truly thought of the enormity, the impossibility of the task ahead of him. So, four men had died. Who cared? Millions of dollars and pounds were finding its way into the lives of others every hour. But King cared about more than the money. He cared about the Jameson family. He cared about a little boy suffocated just so a terrorist organisation could shoot and kill a billionaire for some warped socio-political manifesto. That, and the other innocent lives caught up in this organisation’s crusade, was what he would be using for his motivation.

19

 

The outskirts of Cape Town

South Africa

The South African sun was hot, even for April. Whether it was unseasonably so, Caroline did not know, but it was nudging thirty degrees centigrade and there was little wind. The ground was dry and dusty; and although it had been raining when she had arrived last night, it didn’t look like it had rained in weeks. It was an arid heat that seemed to reflect off the ground and increase in both density and temperature, heating you from all directions like an oven. She had heard that the cape had a microclimate, and she could well believe it.

There were flies around the bodies, which were now starting to smell. There was no smell in the world like spilled blood in the heat. A sickly, sweet and intoxicating putridity that worked its way into the nose and throat and stayed with you for so long, that you never quite noticed it leave. There was the odour of urine and faeces too, the muscles relaxed in sudden trauma and nature took its course. It was a wholly unpleasant experience that went hand in hand with violent death.

It had been an hour since she had spoken to King, although he had sent a short text message saying he loved her. She had texted back, reciprocating, but she needed to keep her phone signal clear and limit the battery’s use. She looked at the body on the ground. Neither man had died quickly or cleanly, which she had found so often to be the case, and there was a great deal of dried blood on the ground which had turned the dust into a crimson-coloured mud.

She had checked both bodies for identification, but neither man had carried anything. Both men had two-thousand Rand on them, just walking about money really. Enough for fuel and a couple of meals. Around one-hundred and twenty pounds Stirling.

They were professionals alright.

Both men carried only cheap mobile phones, both locked, but Caroline suspected there would be no numbers stored, and they would be what law enforcement referred to as burners. Store-bought non-contract phones, entirely untraceable if they had been bought with cash.

The man called Kruger had carried a spare magazine for the 9mm pistol. Caroline had wasted no time reloading the weapon and tucked it into the waistband of her jogging pants. She noted the second man had carried only the knife. She suspected both the gun, the phones and the knife would have been disposed of after they had killed her.

She had taken a walk around the car, filmed the scene with her smartphone and recorded her version of the facts as she had filmed. She uploaded the recording to her iCloud. She would be able to take photographs off the film if she needed to. She was pleased with the documentation.

It always paid to hold the aces.

She had no idea what the local police would make of the situation, nor how thorough their investigation would be. Nor how quickly they would want to tie it up. She hoped it would not get that far. Hoped these two thugs could be lost in the system. But that was for the Foreign Office and their man at the embassy. She just hoped he had both vision and perspective.

She regretted asking King who he had been with. She trusted him, had done so with her life in the past. She knew that he trusted her too. She knew how the game worked, for they always referred to their work for the intelligence services as a game, and she knew that he would need his head in the game and not to be fretting about what she was thinking. It was a two-way street, and so far, they had respected that. The woman had just sounded so damned familiar with him.

So comfortable.

And then there was the hotel. King had told her he had been compromised at the cottage. Now she wanted to know what had happened, but didn’t want to bother him while he was on assignment. She knew she would just have to wait until she was out of this, or indeed, back home.

The car arrived after another thirty minutes. It was a new Toyota Land Cruiser in white with heavy black tints on the windows. The front windows rolled down simultaneously, revealing a man behind the wheel. She stood up and watched as the driver turned a tight circle and parked facing out the way he had come, noted the man had most likely rolled down the windows to put her at ease. That was a good sign, an experienced field professional. But the two dead guys had been too. She was wary, but it was only to be expected.

“Caroline Darby?” the man said. He removed a pair of aviator sunglasses and made eye contact. The gesture counted for a great deal. Especially when the person he was meeting had already shot and killed two men. “Of course, you are. Not many attractive thirty-seven-year olds out here with two dead bodies, I suppose?” He smiled, but waivered when she didn’t reply. She had a hand on the hefty butt of the Beretta and he seemed to realise this. “My name is Ryan Beard, I’m SIS station officer