The Lucifer Network (2 page)

‘Mr Jackman asks if you will kindly join him in the restaurant, sir.'

‘Does he? Right.'

Sam stood up without hurrying. He stepped past the Chinese screen, pausing in the entrance lobby to glance through the glass into the car park. A drab green Land Rover stood ostentatiously beneath one of the floodlights, its occupants dressed in army fatigues. Fear rippled through him, but he rebuked himself for it. This was friendly territory he was on, not some madhouse like Iraq.

Harry Jackman didn't rise from the table as Sam approached, instead he eyed him with an almost playful look. His bald head was red from the African sun. His eyebrows were smudges on a fleshy face, angled upwards into the middle of his brow, giving him the deceptive look of a clown. He wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a thin stripe. Small gold spectacles perched firmly on the bridge of his nose.

‘I trust you've come alone,' he murmured as Packer sat, his accent vaguely north of Birmingham.

‘You mean you're not sure?'

Jackman stifled a smirk. Of course he was sure.

‘You on the other hand have brought some friends along,' Sam remarked, inclining his head towards the door.

‘You noticed. I'm glad. You were meant to.'

‘You pay them to look after you? Or they do it for love?'

Jackman chuckled. ‘What do you think . . .' Behind the small, polished lenses his eyes lacked self-confidence. The look of a man used to peering over his shoulder. The armed men in the car park would be regular escorts, Sam surmised.

‘Drink?' Jackman offered.

‘That'd be nice.'

‘I've ordered some Cape Red . . .'

‘Fine.'

‘Brain glue I call it.'

‘I know. And a glass of water please.'

Jackman had only to raise his hand from the table for the waiter to be at his elbow.

‘Some water for my guest, Emanuel.'

‘Tell you what,' said Sam, glancing up. ‘Mind if we change tables? There's a terrible draught here.'

The waiter looked to Jackman for guidance. The stony consternation on the gun-runner's face was enough to harden Sam's suspicion of a microphone beneath the mahogany.

Jackman chuckled again. ‘Why not,' he beamed. ‘Anywhere you like. You choose.'

The
maitre
d
' was summoned to reseat them. When they were alone again, Jackman glowered at him. ‘Happy now?'

‘Stiff neck. From the flight,' Sam explained.

Jackman settled back like a Buddha, nodding knowingly.

‘Please yourself. They look after me pretty well here.' He said it with the smugness of a man for whom being served by others was important. ‘I can remember them building this place,' he added, reminding Sam how long he'd been around in these parts. ‘The bloke whose idea it was had done well from emeralds and wanted to put down roots. He'd gone native for a while, stupid bugger.

Had an African lady-friend he was talking of marrying. Didn't happen, as it turned out. Went for a Norwegian instead. The wife of one of his first clients when he opened the lodge to tourists. Classic long legs, although the blonde hair was from a bottle. Only discovered that when she dropped her drawers.' He chortled, his laugh rattling unhealthily in his chest.

‘He still runs it?'

‘No. Sold out five years ago. Moved back to Europe with his Scandi woman. Switzerland, I think.'

The waiter was back with the wine, a jug of water and two menus.

‘Steaks are always good,' Jackman advised.

Sam chose a T-bone. A CD of Miriam Makeba played in the background. They were a reasonable distance from the next table and wouldn't be overheard here.

‘Good flight out?' They were fencing. Waiting to see who would be first to raise the issue they'd come here to discuss.

‘A 747 to Lusaka then a hop up to the Copperbelt on a turbo-prop.'

‘I trust HMG sends its representatives first class.'

‘Limousines at each end and a personal porter.'

‘I mean, I wouldn't want to think that the man I'm being asked to deal with only merits being stuffed in the back of a jumbo with the families and the blacks.' He said it with venom, as if such status issues really mattered to him.

Packer's patience gave way. ‘Fuck the flight, Harry.' He forced his mouth into a smile for the benefit of anyone watching. ‘What are you up to?'

Jackman drew back.

‘Testing the water.'

‘Meaning?'

‘That I've had enough of this continent, Simon. I want
to go home. And I want to be sure I'm treated right when I get there.'

‘You've a funny way of going about it.'

‘Think so?' The eyebrows shot up again, the eyes beneath them twinkling. ‘
You're
here, aren't you? The string-pullers have sent their boy.'

Sam bristled. ‘Those string-pullers, Harry, you've upset them. Writing outrageous letters to the papers isn't wise.'

‘One paper.'

‘Whatever. Wasn't wise at all. You ought to be careful.'

‘
Me
need to be careful? I think you'll find the boot's on the other foot, chum.'

The waiter returned to reset the cutlery for what they'd ordered. He was joined by a waitress with a basket of bread, a slender woman with braided hair, clad in a low-cut African dress. Her skin had the burnished glow of roasted coffee and her teeth dazzled as she smiled. She leaned forward and her breasts quivered with a life of their own. Then she withdrew and a third server came with soup.

When they'd all gone Harry Jackman passed a hand over his shiny dome.

‘Fancied that one, did you?'

‘She was very beautiful.'

‘A lot of them are. And a lot of ex-pats develop a taste, of course.'

‘Not you? How many years have you been here?'

‘Twenty-five, give or take. But no. They're different, you see, African women. The smell. The shape of their mouths and their arses. To me it'd be like shagging a sheep. Not that I've anything against sheep. Or Africans. They've got their place in nature's blueprint and we've got ours.'

‘Apartheid.'

‘Exactly. The idea was right. It's the way the Afrikaners handled it that was wrong.'

‘And because apartheid's dead you want to go home?'

‘Not that simple. Although you know as well as I do what's happening here. This is no place any more for a white man wanting an easy life. Blighty, old boy. That's where my roots are.'

Roots, thought Sam as he spooned tomato soup into his mouth. As twisted as the rest of Jackman's law-dodging life. The file in London had shown a blank when it came to the man's parentage. The first note of the young Harry's existence had been at one week old when found in the doorway of a pub.

‘So let me get this straight, Harry.' Sam edged his voice with sarcasm. ‘You want to settle back in the UK. And you want to be sure officialdom is nice to you when you get there. So what's the first thing you do? You offer a story to the papers that'll blow a hole in the government's claims to have an ethical foreign policy. You're off your trolley.'

‘I need to be sure, Simon.'

‘Of what, for Christ's sake?'

‘Of being allowed to live the rest of my life in peace. I'm pushing fifty. Fifteen years older than you?' He overestimated by a handful of years. ‘I can afford to retire. To do a bit of this and a bit of that, just for the fun of it. Not for the money. I've got enough.'

‘I'm sure you have.' Thousands of dead Africans had seen to that. ‘But you're still confusing me, Harry. How does writing a letter to a newspaper claiming the British government was involved in a bungled African coup get you safe passage home?'

Jackman's eyes became deadly serious.

‘Come on. Don't play the virgin with me. A warning
shot, that's all it was. I knew damn well that good-ole-boy Hampson wouldn't go into print about Bodanga without the say-so of C or whatever you call him these days.'

‘Meaning?'

Jackman hissed with exasperation. ‘That I just wanted to show you what I
could
do if I was so minded.'

‘Oh. Is
that
what it was about?' Sam mocked, trying to get Jackman on the back foot. ‘You've miscalculated, old son. The people you're dealing with don't take kindly to threats.'

‘Don't be daft. They need my co-operation as much as I need theirs. The world's a dangerous place. You scratch my back . . .'

Sam gave up on his soup which tasted unpleasantly of the can it came from, and pushed the plate away.

‘So, spell it out to me, Harry. What exactly is it you want?'

‘Immunity from any sort of prosecution.'

Sam lifted his eyebrows.

‘Come on,' Jackman insisted. ‘It's a small return for the services I've done for my country.'

It was true there'd been other small jobs for SIS before last year's arms deal. Smuggling people across borders and providing untraceable funds to political groups that the government of the day was embarrassed to be associated with.

‘What sort of prosecutions did you have in mind?' Sam inquired sceptically.

Jackman's gaze became a tunnel with no light at its end. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

‘Can't imagine,' he murmured with a contrived mysteriousness. ‘But there's people out there who'll dream something up. You boyos have found me useful over the years, but I don't kid myself you're my friends.'

‘So. Let me get this right,' Sam persisted, spreading his
fingers across the edge of the table. ‘You want HMG to promise that you'll never be prosecuted, whatever crimes you've committed. Is that it?'

Jackman swallowed. ‘Yes, essentially.' He paused for a moment. ‘Odd word
crime,
don't you think? The definition of it seems to depend on who's carried it out.'

Sam folded his arms. Time for some home truths. ‘They'll never buy it, Harry. Not a blanket immunity. You'll need to be specific. Have to spell it out in black and white.'

The gun-runner's shoulders sagged as if the wind had been knocked from him. He shook his head. ‘No can do.'

The soup plates were cleared away and the steaks set before them.

‘Best beef in southern Africa . . .' said Jackman listlessly. The words sounded like a mantra he'd grown rather tired of.

‘You'll miss it,' Sam goaded. ‘We're all getting brain disease from the stuff back home.'

The gun-runner fired a glance towards the door. Sam recognised the look and empathised with it. Fear of enemies closing in.

‘Expecting someone?'

Jackman grimaced. ‘Look. I
do
want to go home, Simon. Back to England. Don't make it hard for me.'

‘What makes you think you'll be safer there?'

‘I'll blend in easier . . . Surrounded by people my own colour.'

‘You're out of touch. Times have changed.'

‘Not out in Suffolk they haven't.'

Sam remembered the file again. An ex-wife and a daughter living in Ipswich.

Jackman's eyebrows arched in despair. ‘I've
got
to get
home, Simon. Too many enemies here. That's why I'm prepared to play rough to be left in peace.'

Packer watched him begin picking at his food. He was puzzled. There was something fundamentally odd about Jackman's fear of legal retribution. Before coming out here his controller had told him there was nothing pending. No warrants waiting to be served. No misdemeanours under investigation. So long as he kept his mouth shut the ex-pat could return home and merge with the background as much as he wanted. But Jackman clearly thought otherwise, a paranoia that was perfectly understandable after so many years of bending rules to suit his own pocket. But Packer sensed there was something specific Jackman was concerned about. Some deed in his recent past which he expected to backfire.

If so, his mission was changing. No longer merely a matter of agreeing terms for Jackman's silence, but a need to discover what the bugger had been up to. Success would require more subtlety than he'd used so far. He decided to sidetrack. To soften up the ground.

‘Why Africa, Harry? What got you started here? Twenty-five years ago, you said.'

Jackman's eyes melted with self-satisfaction. His mouth puckered, like a bully's given an unexpected excuse to brag. ‘You really want to know?' Sam nodded. Jackman took a gulp of wine. ‘Dust. That's what got me started.'

‘Dust?'

Jackman grinned. ‘I was a chemist by training when I came out. First job was managing a lab at a copper mine. Boring as hell. I had two Kaffirs who did all the real work. Then one day a black came to me who'd been given the job of cleaning the whole place up. Copper production sites get littered with all sorts of junk. This Af had found some drums of powder and didn't know whether it was safe to dump them. Didn't know what was in 'em, you
see.' Jackman's eyes twinkled at the memory of it. ‘So what did I do? I did a little test in the lab after my two assistants had gone home. Found out the powder was condensates from the smelter chimneys. Packed with cobalt and nickel. Worth a fortune to somebody with the hardware for extracting it. So, I told the Af the drums weren't worth anything but because they contained toxic minerals, they couldn't be taken for dumping. Then I got in touch with a feller I knew in South Africa . . .'

‘And the rest is history,' Sam interrupted. ‘A life of crime was under way.'

‘Crime? Come on, my friend! Out here that's not crime, it's business.'

‘But a business which has now turned sour, you're saying.'

Jackman sighed. ‘It's become harder. A lot harder. Too many people wanting a cut.'

For a while they ate without speaking. The beef was as good as Jackman had promised. Sam noticed an increase in frequency of the glances towards the door.