Ivory Nation, Andy Maslen [e manga reader .txt] 📗

‘Julius beats me. He put his mark on me.’

She crossed the room in a couple of long strides and kicked him mid-thigh. He gasped and clenched his jaws to avoid giving her the satisfaction of signalling his pain.

‘You pathetic piece of shit,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what sort of women you have in England, but I’m a loyal Boer wife and a proud freedom fighter. There was something off about your act from the moment you turned up in my kitchen. I warned Julius, but he fell for your crap.’

She kicked him again, on the same spot, and this time Gabriel bit his tongue in an effort to stay quiet.

‘My tattoo? BAW doesn’t stand for Behoort aan Witaarde,’ she said. ‘It’s Beter Almal Wit. You get that, spioen?’ Another kick. ‘Better All White. And I got the bruise when my horse threw me.’

Gabriel stared up at them both. Witaarde had a pistol on his hip in a brown leather holster. Not the 629. This looked like a basic nine. Klara wasn’t carrying.

He calculated distances, angles, lines of attack. If he could get to his feet, he’d stand a chance. Allow them to march him somewhere, slow down, stumble, back into Witaarde, roll under the muzzle and to the side in a Krav Maga move, disable Witaarde with an elbow to the side, disarm him, shoot them both, get out, steal a car, get gone.

He pushed his back into the wall and levered himself to a standing position, grunting with the effort and feeling his guts roil again.

Witaarde took a step back, hand on the butt of the pistol.

‘Don’t even think about it. You make a move faster than a snail, I’ll put a round into your belly and we’ll leave you out on the veldt for the hyenas. Now, what’s your name? Your real name.’

Gabriel inhaled.

‘Gabriel Wolfe.’

Witaarde smiled.

‘There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Be good and you might get out of this in one piece.’

A phone rang. Gabriel recognised the ring tone. Witaarde frowned and reached into a pocket. The hand that emerged clutched Gabriel’s Department-issued phone.

Witaarde glanced at the screen.

‘Someone called Eli wants you. Here. Talk to her. If I don’t like what I hear I’ll slice your balls off and feed them to my pigs.’

He handed the phone to Gabriel.

‘Eli, hi, what’s up?’ he said.

‘Not much. I’m stuck at home watching the news. I tried to call Don but his phone rang out. Then I went to Rothford. The gate guard turned me away. A new guy. I’m worried, Gabe.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’

‘Are you? Because I’m not. How about you. Where are you? Did you find the BVR yet?’

‘It looks like a dead end. I’m in Jo’burg but the guy never showed. I think that Irishman conned me out of ten grand.’

‘Shit! OK, so what next?’

‘Return to base, I guess. Hey, I tell you what?’

‘What?’

Gabriel looked at Klara Witaarde as he spoke. She was regarding him with cold, dead eyes.

‘I’ll cook Sunday dinner for you. Your favourite. Roast pork with all the trimmings.’

‘What? You know I’m Jewish, right? I mean, that little fact about me hadn’t escaped your attention?’

‘Yeah, OK, El. Love you, too. Bye.’

Gabriel handed the phone back to Witaarde.

‘Who is she?’ Witaarde asked.

‘My girlfriend.’

‘Yeah? Well, you better pray I like the rest of your answers or she’s going to be looking for a new man in her life.’

‘Ask me anything.’

Witaarde shook his head.

‘Not here. You sound too fucking cool and collected despite the beating Duckie and Ruud handed you. No, I think we need to get your defences all the way down.’ He turned to his wife. ‘What do you think, darling?’

She grinned.

‘I’ll go and run a bath.’

The horse trough stood in the centre of a barn, its slatted sides admitting the first rays of the sun. The wide, flat shafts captured dust motes that swirled in and out of the yellow light.

The two giant Boers, Duckie and Ruud, had him gripped by the elbows, his arms twisted up behind his back. He trod on a nail buried in the straw and yelped as half an inch of steel penetrated the arch of his foot.

Ignoring him, they frogmarched him over to the trough and pushed him forward at the waist, forcing his head down. He saw himself staring back out of the trough. The water slopped over the rim.

‘Put him in,’ Klara said.

The giants lifted Gabriel as if he were a child and dumped him into the water. He gasped, expecting cold, but it was oddly warm.

He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped his teeth together as one of the men pushed him by the throat backwards and down. He had time to gasp in a breath before the water closed over his face.

The faces wobbled and broke apart, then came together in hideous grins. He willed himself to stay calm, beginning a mantra Master Zhao had taught him. He knew he could hold his breath for up to two and half minutes with sufficient preparation, both physical and mental. But this wasn’t one of those times.

At the forty-five second mark, he could already feel his system screaming for fresh oxygen and had to fight down the urge to struggle against the man’s massive fist.

Sparks jumped in his eyes, then he was being hauled up. Choking and spitting, he drew in a huge breath, then started coughing as water droplets entered his lungs.

‘Why are you here, Gabriel Wolfe?’ Klara said.

The giant thrust him beneath the water again. He’d been expecting time to answer Klara’s question and could only snatch a brief breath before the water rolled over his face again.

Thirty seconds and he was on the point of blacking out. He imagined the water flooding into his nose, his mouth, his throat, his lungs, ending it all, never seeing Eli again. Dying in a foreign country and being thrown out like meat for the veldt’s scavengers.

He was wrenched up again. He struggled to drag air down, retching and coughing. He didn’t