Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

in an incredulous tone of voice.

Gabriel smiled down at him.

‘Do I need to threaten you?’

Belfast’s stare intensified and Gabriel had time to observe a squiggled blue-green vein pulsing beneath the translucent skin at his right temple. His lips tightened to a mean line.

Gabriel counted in his head.

One…two…three…

He visualised drawing the karambit and laying Belfast’s face open.

41

Belfast laughed.

‘Fuck you, you English cunt!’ he said, smiling now. ‘You’ve got a pair of brass balls on you, I’ll give you that.’

‘So you can help.’

‘Show me the money.’

Gabriel reached into his suit pocket, let his knuckles glide over the karambit’s knurled grip and withdrew the bundle of hundred-dollar notes. No thicker than a deck of cards, it wouldn’t look very impressive unless the viewer could see the 100s printed in the corners of the topmost note.

Gabriel made sure Belfast got a good long look before replacing it in his pocket.

‘So?’ Gabriel said.

‘Let me make a call.’

Gabriel watched as Belfast wandered away to the edge of the clearing before pulling out a phone. The man’s head nodded, shook, bobbed again. His free hand described random movements in the air, chopping down, holding up the index finger, patting an imaginary animal. Finally, he nodded emphatically, before ending the call and walking back to Gabriel.

‘It’s on. My BVR contact says he’ll send one of his guys to meet you.’

‘Here?’

‘No. Jo’burg. Be there day after tomorrow. A bar called the Blue Springbok on Smit Street. Seven in the evening.’ He held up his phone and took Gabriel’s picture, then tapped the screen a few times. ‘There! Just sent him your mugshot. Now he knows what you look like.’

It was a good idea, a little bit of tradecraft, but it came over like a threat. Gabriel Wolfe didn’t like being threatened. In that moment he made a decision.

‘Thanks. I suppose you want your money.’

Belfast grinned. The little green light came back on.

‘That would be nice, yes.’

Gabriel made a show of looking around. He stared at the guards on the door, who were eyeing them with bored expressions.

‘Not here. Let’s go over there, behind the church. Out of sight of Tweedledum and Tweedledee over there. Wouldn’t want them getting any ideas.’

Belfast looked over Gabriel’s shoulders.

‘Aye, maybe not. I saw them take a guy’s hand off at the wrist a couple of months back for trying to cheat one of the vendors.’

Gabriel nodded his head towards a stand of palms choked with low-growing ferns and creepers to the left of the church. The two men walked side by side until the vegetation thickened and pressed against the ancient stone walls of the church. He stood back and let Belfast precede him.

Belfast pushed his way between two palms and kicked his way through the undergrowth until he emerged into a small space no more than six feet square. It smelled strongly of urine and Gabriel realised they’d stumbled into what passed for an outside toilet.

The little man turned, hand out.

Gabriel placed the bundle of notes in his palm.

‘You don’t mind if I count it,’ Belfast said. A statement, not a question.

‘Not at all. Tell me, you said you’re a foot soldier. You chalk up many kills?’

Belfast grinned, though he didn’t lift his gaze from the notes rustling between his thumbs.

‘One or two, you know? Squaddies, mainly. Couple of RUC. Eejits wouldn’t know one end of a—’

The rest of the sentence was lost in a gargling wheeze.

Blood sprayed out in a translucent fan from the rent in Belfast’s throat, spattering against the glossy leaves of a fern with a sound like rain. He turned, eyes wide, clutching his throat, searching Gabriel’s face for an explanation.

Gabriel held up the karambit, whose blade was smeared red.

‘Fuck you, and fuck your project,’ he hissed, before kicking Belfast in the chest and sending him toppling backwards into the soft embrace of the lush green undergrowth.

Gabriel pulled a couple of the larger leaves over the body, then reached in and took Belfast’s phone. He stepped back. He couldn’t do much about the blood spatter, but of Belfast himself, there was no sight. He cleaned the blade on the ground, then folded it and replaced it in his pocket.

He found Eli near the doorway, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned woman dressed in a chocolate-brown trouser suit, her thick black hair tied back in a ponytail.

‘Time to go,’ Gabriel said.

Eli nodded.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Maria,’ she said.

The two women shook hands and then Gabriel and Eli were walking smartly back to the Merc.

‘Everything OK?’ Eli asked.

‘Yes. But we shouldn’t hang around. I just killed a guy.’

‘What? Where?’

‘Back there. He set up a meet with a BVR contact in Johannesburg. Two days’ time.’

They reached the car. Eli climbed behind the wheel and Gabriel sat beside her. As she swung the car around in a circle, past the Bentley’s imposing front grille, a couple of white men emerged from the church, their heads turning from side to side.

‘Drive,’ Gabriel said. ‘Nice and easy.’

Back on the riverbank road, Eli glanced up at the rear-view mirror.

‘Nobody behind us. You think they were looking for him?’

‘I don’t know. But I don’t want to find out. Give this beast some juice and let’s check out. We need to get out of Vientiane.’

42

JOHANNESBURG

‘What time is it?’ Gabriel asked.

He was sitting on the bed towelling his hair. They’d checked in an hour earlier and he realised he had no sense of time or date beyond what his watch or phone told him. The perils for criss-crossing so many time zones in such a short space of time.

‘Six-thirty,’ Eli replied. ‘It’s a ten-minute taxi ride, I checked.’

She was sitting in an armchair, feet tucked beneath her, reading a book.

Gabriel dressed in pale chinos, a white shirt and a navy linen jacket. He slipped his bare feet into tobacco-brown boat shoes.

‘How do I look?’

‘I like that better than the suit. Too formal. That’s much more you.’

Gabriel nodded. He patted his pockets reflexively. They’d left their newly acquired hardware behind in Vientiane.

Catching the movement, Eli grinned.

‘You’ll