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

who Horatio Bokara is, obviously, but the other one?’

‘Your other friend from Balliol College, Oxford. Julius Witaarde, which means White Earth, by the way, although I’m sure you know that.’

‘What is this about, Joe?’ Barnett-Short asked. ‘You did go to Oxford, right?’

‘Shut up, Tracy,’ he said.

‘No need to be rude to the lady,’ Gabriel said. He turned and pointed his left-hand Glock at Barnett-Short. ‘Go on,’ a beat, ‘Tracy. Ask him your question again.’

‘Who is Julius Witaarde, Joe? And what’s this about you and Bokara?’

‘Witaarde is nobody. I don’t know anyone by that name. Look,’ he jerked his chin at Gabriel. ‘The man’s obviously insane. He’s a fantasist.’

‘Am I?’ Gabriel asked. He addressed the room as if giving a presentation. ‘Julius Witaarde was, until recently, the leader of two distinct, but interrelated groups. One, Boerevryheid an Regte, is a white separatist movement in South Africa. The other, which finances both that group and some of your boss’s own efforts, doesn’t have a name, but it’s an ivory poaching operation stretching from Botswana to Laos and into mainland China.’

‘This is just ridiculous!’ Tammerlane said, but his eyes gave him away. They were wild and his breathing was coming in short gasps.

‘No. It isn’t ridiculous at all,’ Gabriel said. ‘It was this man’s friends who murdered the four British paratroopers last month, along with three members of the Botswana Defence Force Anti-Poaching Unit.’

One of the men, Aldon Hayter, that was it, was staring with frank curiosity at Tammerlane.

‘Joe, it’s not true, is it?’

‘Look at him,’ Gabriel said. ‘Look at his face. Can’t you see? Of course it’s true.’

Hayter stared at Tammerlane, and Gabriel was gratified to see the other people doing the same.

Tammerlane straightened in his chair. He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it into place. Then he swept the others with a gaze all the more dangerous for the friendliness in that famous, Instagram-worthy smile.

‘Comrades. A bloodless revolution would have been preferable. But sometimes the greater good calls for sacrifices,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Think of the good we’re doing for this country. Of the good we will do.’

Then he turned towards the door and yelled:

‘Guards!’

He turned back to Gabriel, his eyes flashing, a triumphant grin on his face.

‘Yes, you’re right. I do know Julius. And Horatio. I know all about the unfortunate business in Botswana. But one can’t run a revolution on buttons, Gabriel. Projects like mine need money. Real money. With big business against me, where else was I to find it?’

Gabriel watched with interest as the other occupants of the table drew away from Tammerlane. Chairs had scraped back, torsos were leaned away from him.

‘Witaarde is dead,’ Gabriel said. ‘So are his men. The Botswanans have shut your evil little operation down.’

Tammerlane’s gaze flicked to the door and back.

‘They’re not coming,’ Gabriel said. He held up the pistols. ‘Where do you think I got these from?’

‘How can you criticise me for what we did out there? I’m transforming a country of seventy-plus million people. How can you weigh that against the deaths of five men and find me wanting?’

‘Five men and one woman.’

Tammerlane shook his head.

‘No. Julius called me. It was only men out there.’

‘I’m not talking about out there,’ Gabriel said, levelling his right arm towards Tammerlane.

‘What are you talking about then?’ Hooper asked.

‘Princess Alexandra.’

‘What?’

He turned to her, but kept one pistol pointed straight at the bridge of Tammerlane’s nose.

‘He hired a Syrian contractor killer called Nazir Aboud al-Javari to assassinate Princess Alexandra. That’s how he was able to time his intervention so precisely.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Tammerlane said.

Gabriel shook his head. Time for his bluff. The only weak card in his hand.

‘No I’m not. I killed al-Javari. But before he died, he confessed. I recorded him. It’s what the police call a dying declaration. It’s acceptable in a court of law.’

Tammerlane shook his head. Smiled. He actually smiled. Gabriel felt an urge to empty both Glocks into his grinning face.

Five and a half thousand miles due south, Klara Witaarde was on the phone, talking to a Russian hacker she knew, simply, as WhiteKnight.

‘Check your account. The money should be there,’ she said.

She waited. Outside, she could hear Ruud butchering hogs. Their squeals, cut off and transformed into a gurgle, soothed her.

As Klara counted the number of death-screams Ruud drew from the pigs, WhiteKnight came back on the line.

‘It’s there. Thank you. You want me to hit the green button?’

‘With all your might.’

Klara watched as the little animated globe on her laptop screen spun, before coming to a stop.

‘OK, it’s up,’ WhiteKnight said. ‘Copies to Wikileaks, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, the BBC, Reuters, links on Twitter, Facebook, basically everywhere.’

Klara Witaarde checked the major global news sites, and her social media feeds, as her late husband’s covert audio and video recordings went live, then viral, then global.

One video in particular would do the job, she felt. She played it again. Julius had shot it from a hidden camera in a bag. His voice was rendered with perfect clarity. As was the man he was speaking to, whose face was framed by the fuzzy eclipse of the slit in the leather through which the tiny lens protruded.

Tammerlane smiled at Gabriel.

‘You’re mistaken. I had absolutely nothing to do with her death. You saw me. I was on the TV. I explained what happened. I killed the assassin. The Jew,’ he said. ‘Now, look, I admitted to the business with Julius. But I’m afraid you have no chance at all of getting that to stick. Not least because you won’t be leaving here except in the back of a police car. And I—’

‘Er, Joe. You need to check Twitter,’ Hayter said, in a quiet voice.

The man was staring at his own phone, not looking away from its glowing screen even as he talked. Apart from Gabriel, everyone seated before him took out their phones. He heard a few gasps.

Somebody said, ‘We’re fucked.’

He stood behind Barnett-Short and watched a video playing on her phone.

Framed in a fuzzy brown ellipse,