Maputo
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to sail round the Cape of Good Hope and they were the first to establish a colony on the east coast of Africa. They called it Mozambique and it kept that name after independence. But the new rulers changed the Portuguese name of the capital to Maputo. Kate agreed that Maputo was a good place to land and get lost.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t just turn up at a regular airport. Doing that would be like sailing into a regular harbour in a pirate ship flying the Jolly Roger. Rodriquez plane would come under suspicion the moment it put down.
An alternative landing spot was needed and that wasn’t going to be as easy to find as when they were deep in the African bush. Maputo was a major city. It sprawled into the neighbouring countryside. There were farms and villages everywhere.
Mario followed the main highway into the city. It was choked with traffic including private buses. He knew them from previous visits. They were old and dilapidated. Many were converted vans and trucks. Some started life as buses and had seen better days elsewhere. There were no regular bus stops. People waved the buses down from the side of the road.
He figured they could be the answer to his prayers. He had to dispose of the plane and find a way to get into the centre of the city. The big problem was to find somewhere to land. There were few open spaces. The fields were small and the only vacant land was being used as garbage dumps. Those that weren’t swampy were swarming with people.
One spot looked vaguely possible. It was close to the road. There was little garbage and no sign of people. Mario turned to Kate and pointed.
‘How about down there?’
She craned her neck.
‘You mean that swamp?’
‘It’s not a swamp.’
‘A lot of it is.’
‘But, not all of it.’
‘What about the trees?’
‘I’ve thought about them.’
‘It’s very tight. You’ll have to dump her down.’
‘We could fly on if you think it’s too difficult,’ Mario pointed to the fuel gauge. ‘There’s still a load of gas on board. We could try somewhere else.’
‘No, Mario.’ Kate shook her head. ‘It’s getting late. Do it now while there is still light.’
She sat back. Mario sensed that she thought her mission was over. David seemed to be thinking along similar lines. He had spent the flight talking to Petra, telling her what to do next.
His hands tightened on the joystick.
‘Okay! We are going down.’
He lowered the undercarriage and reduced height. The big problem was to come in low without hitting anything. That meant he had to reduce speed without stalling too soon. Dumping in a swamp was one thing. Dumping in trees was another.
The last of the trees passed beneath the wheels.
‘Get into the brace position!’
He throttled back. The plane stalled and plummeted down. Mario held his breath as it landed with a thump. Mud sprayed in all directions, covering the windscreen and obscuring his vision. He could see little of what was happening and do nothing about it.
The plane snaked over the flooded ground, narrowly avoided a wrecked car, hit a submerged log and emerged onto dry land, scattering piles of garbage before coming to rest against a mound of coconut shells.
‘Everybody out!’
Mario smelt petrol and yelled at the top of his voice. He glanced around. Petra and David were fine but Kate hadn’t been so lucky. Her face was contorted in pain and she was struggling to get her seatbelt undone. He released it and threw open the cabin door.
David pulled Kate out. They grabbed their few belongings and struggled over the broken ground. She limped. He carried his bag with one hand and pulled her along with the other. Mario and Petra walked ahead with the rest of the luggage.
They reached the highway and stood beside it. Buses had looked plentiful from the air. From the ground, there didn’t seem to be so many. A few passed but none stopped when they tried to wave them down.
Kate looked anxiously towards the plane.
‘It’s only a matter of time.’
‘What is?’ David asked.
‘It’s going to catch fire.’
‘Then we’d better get well clear before it does.’ David took her arm. ‘If we hang around here we could be implicated. People will start asking questions.’
She limped beside him as best she could. Petra struggled along behind them with their bags. She was worried that scavengers would rush in and try to strip the plane of valuables. That’s what happened in Africa. Poor people died when they tried to salvage the castoffs of an affluent society.
To her relief, an ancient bus appeared. She put down the bags and dashed into the road, waving. Mario watched in horror as the bus skidded to a halt. He recalled that a similar system operated in Cape Town and was exceedingly dangerous.
He ran to join her. Men were clinging to the side of the vehicle. Little boys were riding on the roof. A man got out to make room for Petra. Kate grabbed the side of the bus. Another man got out and she was pulled inside. It was all over in seconds.
Mario hung on beside David. Boards had been welded on for people to stand on. He stood on one and wrapped his arms around the handholds. Things were falling into place. He and Petra had shown that they weren’t pathetic rich kids who couldn’t handle difficult situations. They had taken control and knew what had to be done.
At an early age, he had been sickened by his relatives and the people who hung about them. For some reason, he had not taken to their rapacious ways. Everything about his family and their friends repulsed him. Now he was in a position to act. With Petra by his side he would put an end to all of them.
A hand reached down and tapped his head. Mario looked up and saw a small face peering down at him. The kid was travelling on the roof with other boys. He pointed and yelled. At first, Mario thought he was speaking an African language. Then he recognised the Portuguese word for fire.
Flames were rising above the trees. For a moment, it looked as if they would die down. Then there was a blinding flash, followed by a might roar and a series of explosions as Rodriquez’s hand grenades went off.
The hotel was midrange. Mario said that if they went for one of the expensive places in town the Cabal would quickly track them down. There weren’t many posh hotels and the appearance of four scruffily-dressed tourists, with bulging bankcards, would soon attract attention.
Kate couldn’t fault that. His next observation also made sense. They should avoid low dives like those Rodriquez used. The answer was to go for a midrange establishment that catered for the needs of respectable locals and tourists on a modest budget.
They ended up in place full of priests and nuns who had gathered for a noble-minded convention on something or other. Kate didn’t know what it was. They spoke Portuguese. She spoke Spanish and had difficulty making herself understood.
Mario didn’t. His Portuguese was perfect. He rattled away, extolling the name of Lord Jesus and crossing himself at every opportunity. Petra nodded piously and the nuns lapped it up.
Kate wasn’t convinced by the performance. She had seen this sort of display before. Mario and Petra were born politicians. They had their priorities. She guessed Jesus didn’t feature highly in any of them.
She glanced across the table at David. The evening meal was over and coffee had been served. He had drunk his and was fiddling with the laptop computer the inkosi had given them, trying to access messages. Earlier, the reception had been poor. Now, it had improved.
His eyes lit up and he typed away. Kate guessed he was entering the codes that would unscramble Humphrey’s messages. David was good at remembering strings of numbers and letters. Other people wrote them down. He said that was dangerous and should never be done.
He beckoned to her.
‘There’s something here from Humph.’
She went to the other side of the table. The room was poorly lit and Humphrey’s message stared her in the face. He had been speaking to Olaf.
‘My God!’
She turned to Mario.
‘Humph knows about the chopper.’
Mario left the nuns and hurried across.
Kate pointed to the screen.
‘We shot it down six hours ago and Humph already knows.’
‘Olaf told him,’ Mario said.
‘Yes.’
‘Then it’s not amazing.’ Mario peered over her shoulder. ‘Olaf is the Cabal’s spymaster. He doesn’t just kill people for them. Olaf runs their cyber network and he provides them with information.’
David handed his phone to Mario
‘Humph thinks that Olaf is preparing to defect. All it needs is a prod from someone like you and he will come over to our side. He wants you to phone your parents, tell them that you have escaped and need to be got out.’
Mario stared at the phone.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kate asked.
‘I need to think this through.’
‘You mean you don’t want to do it?’
‘Yes. But give me a chance to think about it.’
‘There’s nothing to think about, Mario.’ Kate glared at him. ‘Humph has told us what to do. All that remains is to go ahead and do it. You need to get back home and talk to Olaf. David and I need to get out of here and hide.’
‘What about Petra?’
‘She goes with you, of course.’
Kate watched as Mario fumbled with the phone. It looked as if he would continue to hesitate. She got ready to give him another prod and was about to speak when he pushed up a number and a dialling tone sounded. It went on for a while then a voice answered in Spanish. Mario replied in English.
‘Father. It’s me …’
There was something very old-fashioned about the way they spoke. Kate listened as Mario described how he and Petra had been dragged off a dive boat and taken into captivity. He said they were hauled through remote parts of southern Africa and suffered terrible hardships before being loaded onto a plane by David Paget and a ferocious female pilot who shot down a helicopter during the flight. She flew on to Maputo and crashed the plane when she tried to land beside the highway. She and David were trapped in their seats. He and Petra managed to escape before the plane burst into flames.
‘Where are you?’ his father asked.
‘In a hotel.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In the centre of town.’
‘What’s its name?’
‘Hotel Liberdade.’
‘Stay there. We’ll come and fetch you.’
The phone went dead. The speed with which the call was over was stunning. Mario’s father was speaking as if he was just around the corner and about to jump into a car and fetch them.
‘Where is the Hotel Liberdade?’ Kate asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Mario shrugged. ‘I made up the name.’
David strode forward.
‘Right. We’ve got to act fast. Phone for a taxi. If there is a Hotel Liberdade, go there. If there isn’t, find another hotel and call your father from there. Tell him you made a mistake and give him the name of the new place.’
A mad rush into the city followed. The taxi driver didn’t know about a Hotel Liberdade and found another, which was suitably posh. Mario produced a bankcard and they signed in using their real names. A porter showed them to their room and Mario phoned his father. He said he had got the hotel name wrong and gave the new name. His father told him to stay put.
Minutes later their phone rang and he heard Cuthbert Maguire’s rasping voice. He announced that he was coming up from Cape Town, in his private jet, to collect them. They would then fly on to Europe, where Mario would be reunited with his parents. They must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
Mario’s blood ran cold. Cuthbert rationed his time sparingly. If he was showing a personal interest in them then it wasn’t out of compassion. Cuthbert was highly suspicious of them. There could be no other explanation.
He cursed himself for having given into Kate. If she hadn’t pestered him he would have thought the whole thing through before phoning his father. Instead, he had been forced to think on his feet and had made some stupid mistakes. His story wouldn’t stand up to examination.
He shouldn’t have lied about the hotel and he shouldn’t have said that Kate and David were trapped in a burning plane. They were standing beside him at the time. If Cuthbert sent in a team of investigators they would soon pick holes in his story.
He and Petra would be subjected to intense questioning. They would have to make sure they told the same story. If they weren’t careful they would suffer the same fate as Carla. She thought she could outwit the Cabal and paid the ultimate price.