Small War, Far Away

By Andrew McCoy

SMALL WAR, FAR AWAY

Andrew McCoy

CoolMain Press proudly presents a brand new Lance Weber novel commissioned from Andrew McCoy to stand between his classic tales of violent adventure, CAIN’S COURAGE and LANCE OF GOD.

Lance Webber is on trial for his life for the adventures recounted in BLOOD IVORY. Even if he escapes the hangman’s rope, he can’t stay in Africa. But his friend Tanner is already established in South America, so Lance goes ranching. However, Hernandez, the military governor of the State, wants Lance and Tanner’s land, and the Falklands War gives him the pretext to turn Lance and his party, including guests like Jimmy and Boo, into wanted criminals on the run. This explosive scenario is complicated by Jimmy’s girlfriend, the daughter of the French politician who has yes-power over delivery of the Exocets without which Argentina knows she will lose the Falklands war. Hernandez must take Jeanine alive or his military superiors will stand him up in front of a firing squad.

To save his wife and child, and his friends and their women, Lance must run and fight like he has never run and fought before, several thousand miles down the spine of Argentina to the only safety a stone’s throw from the Antartic at Punta Arenas on Cape Horn. But first, his back to a bridge he has blown up himself, in front of him a single road guarded by several hundred vengeful Argentinian soldiers, he must break out of the forest on the slopes of the Andes in which he has hidden the party.

SMALL WAR, FAR AWAY is another triumphant proof that no one excels Andrew McCoy in describing men and women in violent motion with their honor and lives as the prizes of failure. It is a tour de force by a writer at the peak of his form.

"Like the unblinking eye of a cobra, it is fascinating and hard to look away from, powerful and unique."
Edwin Corley/Good Books

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew McCoy
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311909855

Andrew McCoy

BOSS, the security police of the apartheid regime in South Africa, twice sent assassins after Andrew McCoy on publication of Atrocity Week and The Insurrectionist. South American Nazis hunted him for Cain's Courage.See Rave Reviews from the International Press for Andrew McCoyNovels by Andrew McCoyAtrocity WeekThe InsurrectionistAfrican RevengeBlood IvoryLance of GodThe Meyersco HelixCain’s CourageLiterary CriticismSTIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress (with André Jute)International Press Reviews of Andrew McCoy’s novels“Mr McCoy gets on with the job of telling us exactly what it is like in the Heart of Darkness. He has the soldier's eye for terrain and the soldier's eye for character. This has the ring of truth.”John Braine Sunday Telegraph“Very rough, exciting, filmic, and redolent of a nostalgie de boue d'Afrique...experienced only by the genuine old Africa hand.”Alastair Phillips Glasgow Herald“Like the unblinking eye of a cobra, it is fascinating and hard to look away from, powerful and unique.”Edwin Corley Good Books“I found this work excellent. I recommend it as a book to read on several planes, whether of politics, history or just as thriller -- every episode is firmly etched on my memory. It is certainly a most impressive work of fiction.”“H.P.” BBC External Service“Like a steam hammer on full bore.”Jack Adrian Literary Review“Something else again. The author has plenty of first-hand experience of the conditions he describes so vividly.”Marese Murphy Irish Times“Totally convincing fiction.”Colonel Jonathan AlfordDirector, Institute for Strategic StudiesBBC World at One“The reader is in good hands.”Kirkus Reviews“Even in an entertaining thriller he makes us see ourselves anew.”La Prensa“Graphic adult Boys Own Adventure.”The Irish Press

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More books by Andrew McCoy & friends

SMALL WAR, FAR AWAY

Andrew McCoy

CoolMain Press proudly presents a brand new Lance Weber novel commissioned from Andrew McCoy to stand between his classic tales of violent adventure, CAIN’S COURAGE and LANCE OF GOD.

Lance Webber is on trial for his life for the adventures recounted in BLOOD IVORY. Even if he escapes the hangman’s rope, he can’t stay in Africa. But his friend Tanner is already established in South America, so Lance goes ranching. However, Hernandez, the military governor of the State, wants Lance and Tanner’s land, and the Falklands War gives him the pretext to turn Lance and his party, including guests like Jimmy and Boo, into wanted criminals on the run. This explosive scenario is complicated by Jimmy’s girlfriend, the daughter of the French politician who has yes-power over delivery of the Exocets without which Argentina knows she will lose the Falklands war. Hernandez must take Jeanine alive or his military superiors will stand him up in front of a firing squad.

To save his wife and child, and his friends and their women, Lance must run and fight like he has never run and fought before, several thousand miles down the spine of Argentina to the only safety a stone’s throw from the Antartic at Punta Arenas on Cape Horn. But first, his back to a bridge he has blown up himself, in front of him a single road guarded by several hundred vengeful Argentinian soldiers, he must break out of the forest on the slopes of the Andes in which he has hidden the party.

SMALL WAR, FAR AWAY is another triumphant proof that no one excels Andrew McCoy in describing men and women in violent motion with their honor and lives as the prizes of failure. It is a tour de force by a writer at the peak of his form.

*

"Like the unblinking eye of a cobra,

it is fascinating and hard to look away from,

powerful and unique."

Edwin Corley/Good Books

SMALL WAR, FAR AWAY

*

Andrew McCoy

*

CoolMain Press

www.coolmainpress.com

SCOUTS SKIRMISHING

Lance Weber, fighting for his life, had no time to appreciate the elegant high-ceilinged proportions of the white-painted arena, the ornate plasterwork at the cornices, or the seasoned black wood turned and perfectly joined by a leisured craftsman’s hand even in the dock, where he stood. Everywhere in Africa, the courthouses remain some of the most impressive buildings, as if the colonizers, with uncommon prescience and sentimentality, aware they would soon depart, desired to leave something solid and lasting as their imprint on local civilization, which is after all, only the memory of the cumulation of collective good deeds. And, on balance, the rule of law is their most lasting legacy in those parts of the former British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian empires which have retained decency and sanity; it is true that even here, principled judges are occasionally dismissed, imprisoned, tortured or killed by politicians and that legal process is sometimes corruptly for sale, but on the whole, the fair administration of justice has survived the transition to indigenous rule more successfully than the various forms of democratic government the colonizers fondly believed to be their true monument. Many thoughtful people believe that all else that is good in life follows from respect for rule of law, and they may be right; certainly, in any nation in Africa where the rule of law has broken down, social and economic decline follows shortly, and where it is scrupulously observed, stability and prosperity seems guaranteed. In Kenya in particular, where Lance was on trial for his life in the High Court in Nairobi on the charge of murder, in the highest court in the land a fair trial was as much of a certainty as it ever is at law, quite as a fair a trial as one could obtain at the Old Bailey in London or the Supreme Court in Washington.

Some of Lance’s friends wished it were otherwise.

Nasheer Hussein Habakuk al Habakuk swept his arm three-quarters of a full circle. Drive over any of Kenya’s borders and I will buy the judge, the jury, and the prosecuting counsel, the whole lot for the price of a small Mercedes. He was a handsome Arab, in his middle twenties, dressed in a finely cut pinstriped suit and silk shirt with a wine-red Countess Mara tie, also silk. The maître d’ appeared at his elbow but Nasheer shook his head and the man went away. Nasheer’s family owned the restaurant in which they sat over the lunchtime recess.

I do wish you would not say such things, Mr Kerridge protested hurriedly. He looked at the four policeman wearing sidearms seated at the next table, eating expensive food with gusto and drinking beer with it. His client had been refused bail but the authorities seemed agreeable to any and all reasonable requests as long as the four policemen accompanied him and he returned to the jail every evening. Mr Kerridge was amazed at this arrangement, but supposed that in a thinly populated country, where almost everyone who mattered knew almost everyone else who also mattered, such things were still possible, much as a high sheriff of the middle ages in England might have taken the word of a lord that he would surrender his person on demand.

Why not? Lance asked.

Someone might hear him.

Lance regarded the barrister who had come from London to defend him much as he would a man from Mars. It’s true, Mr Kerridge. Everyone here already knows that much.

Kerridge put down the wineglass from which he had taken only one sip. Mr Weber, this case isn’t about murder, it is about appearances. If you were black, and less prominent, the charge would have been manslaughter and the case, on its merits, would have lasted a morning before you were set free. Now, isn’t it time you put me fully in the picture? After all, you could be hanged. George Albertus Kerridge stared at his client in some fascination. The man looked like the archetypal Guards officer, huge and blond, all muscle and no brain, but he had self-made wealth, even that chill charm which accompanies good manners consistently applied, and he had survived enemies whose malice and malignancy, even from beyond the grave and related in a cozy bar over a drink, made Kerridge shiver. But Kerridge did not care for his client, in fact was slightly frightened of him. No one should be that calm, faced with hanging and the odds against him lengthening day by day. Kerridge restrained a risible impulse to add, I am told being hung by the neck until one is dead is a less than pleasant experience.

Lance drank some of his wine.

You’re on the stand this afternoon. Please do not drink any more, Kerridge said sharply.

Lance smiled gently at his QC and put his glass down. He had drunk only one glass of wine and several more would not affect his judgment but the little man was obviously very frightened. It’s political.

Kerridge waited. When it was obvious Lance, tucking into his tournedos with appetite, considered he had answered the question, Kerridge turned to Nasheer, whose six month-old bank in London had retained him to come out here and defend Weber. Mr Weber has powerful enemies?

Nasheer put down his knife and fork. The governments of Uganda, Ruanda, Burundi and Tanzania want him extradited.

I see. Why wasn’t I told of this?

One problem at a time, Lance said. They weren’t about to make the mistake of coming to fetch me.

Kerridge wondered if it was the heat or the prudent sip of wine he had taken. His head swirled. Mistake?

Fatal mistake, Nasheer explained. Lance surrendered to the Kenyan authorities because he could expect a fair trial. But in those places... you know how it is.

I can guess. Mr Kerridge, concerned he might be accused of racism for denigrating the legal processes of these states, hurried on into the morass. You mean he would have resisted arrest if those, er, others came to, er, fetch him?

Lance was astounded by the man’s naïveté. I wouldn’t have shot first, Mr Kerridge, just gone bush. If they then came after me, well, that would be on their own heads, wouldn’t it?

Kerridge gasped and started wondering if his client was not guilty as charged.

Nasheer could guess what was in the barrister’s mind. This isn’t about breaking laws in those countries, it’s about refusing to pay off certain men of influence.

Kerridge stood dead centre in the quicksand. He wished he were back in the Inns of Court. The prosecution was no doubt about to throw all these extradition warrants against his client’s character. He, George Albertus Kerridge, QC, would be a laughing stock when he returned home. He wondered about emigrating to Australia, no New Zealand, where it would not be so hot.

One other thing you should know, Nasheer said. Lance has a Kenyan passport now but he was born in South Africa — that’s bad enough in the eyes of some Africans. But, in addition, his brother was the famous freelance soldier Major Ewart Weber. A lot of these governments pretend to think Lance is his brother.

Kerridge groaned involuntarily and was embarrassed by the loss of professional control. He liked reading the novels of Tom Sharpe, sometimes scandalizing the other passengers by laughing aloud in the first-class compartment of his commuter train. It struck him that, if this relaxed blond giant’s life did not hang — no, no, depend on such facts and impressions, he could imagine himself in the middle of one of Sharpe’s conglomerations of unlikelihoods.

***

Lance had been put on the stand by Kerridge because the only other witness to the crucial event was dead. Now the prosecution would have its whack at him. The prosecutor too had been brought from London, the Nairobi government making great play of their impartiality. He was a West Indian almost twice as tall as Kerridge, though twice as wide as well. His great paunch was covered by a London-weight vested suit but he did not sweat. For the rest of his life Lance would remember his many large white teeth and shiver; the man obviously meant to hang him. Kerridge had told him Marlowe, the prosecutor, working the other side of the fence, had won some notorious cases in London, succeeding on one occasion in having a confessed murderer set free.

Well now, said Marlowe, smiling as if asking an old friend to tell a well-worn but well-loved story before the fire, why don’t you just tell us in your own words how you came to murder Matthew Ellimore.

Mr Kerridge was too dignified to respond to such blatant provocation but one of his two juniors was on his feet, his speed belying his languid pose and voice. Your Honor, perhaps the prosecution is merely testing whether we are awake. I can assure him we are, especially to unethical attempts to badger the witness.

The smile wilted a little on Marlowe’s face. He hated the Oxbridge affectations of Kerridge’s assistants. Lance suppressed a smile of his own. What the hell, he had always loved a good debate.

The judge glared at Marlowe. Please rephrase the question.

The judge was a man well into his seventies and at the beginning of the trial his face had radiated gentle good humor. But Lance long since decided that the judge was not enjoying this case much.

Indeed, Your Honor. Tell me, in your own words, what happened on the fateful day.

On the evening before, I had—

Never mind the evening before. On the day, I said.

Lance could see what the lawyer was trying to do to him: if he could divorce the death of Matthew Ellimore from the circumstances surrounding it, Lance would have no defense. He glanced at his lawyers but Kerridge was making a note and the two juniors were studying the cornices with vacant expression, waiting to pounce on something objectionable. Lance nodded at the prosecutor. Of course, if you say so. He decided an ingratiating smile would be going too far. But he had to get all the facts into the record. At dawn, having spent the night in the veldt mourning my parents who had been murdered the day before, I saw smoke rising from my lodge several miles away. I knew by their method— here his voice broke and he paused until he recovered it — dismemberment by meat cleavers — that my parents’ killers had been sent by Theodore Bruun and assumed they had come for me too. I started running towards the smoke but a plane bore down on me out of the tall grass and, thinking it to be the murderers, I fired at it. Later I discovered that the man I killed had nothing to do with the killers but had shot all the elephants on my game reserve for their ivory.

You knew by their method, you assumed, you were thinking. Let us take your assumptions in order. What other evidence have you to connect the men who killed your staff at the game lodge with Theodore Bruun?

The junior was on his feet again. Your Honor, the defense is content to stipulate that we cannot without great effort and expense collect the mainly circumstantial evidence connecting certain now deceased gentlemen of Chinese extraction to Theodore Bruun. We submit that such proof would be irrelevant. In addition, we have before now voluntarily made these stipulations and concessions. It really is too much for the prosecution now to attempt to leave the jury with the impression that he is extracting them from an uncooperative witness. What in fact is relevant is what the prosecution has brought out already, our client’s frame of mind.

Marlowe said, Your Honor, I am attempting to establish the accused’s reliability as a witness. But I will let it ride. Now, Mr Weber, you did indeed later kill several of these Chinese you suspected of being conn—

Objection!

Sustained!

All right. Let us then turn to the fate of Theodore Bruun, whom you—

Objection! Your Honor, this is—

If the state of mind of the accused was relevant, and that state of mind concerned Theodore Bruun, I think Your Honor, that I should be allowed—

Objection overruled.

The junior sank into his chair. Kerridge looked up at Lance. They had fallen into a trap.

Thank you. Why, Mr Weber, did Theodore Bruun believe he had reason to kill your parents, a harmless retired couple, and you, a far from harmless— no, never mind, just answer the question so far.

The junior counsel, halfway out of his seat, subsided.

Theodore Bruun was a tyrant engaged by a bigger tyrant called Lobengula to run his so-called army. Between them they terrorized a section of Zaire up near the border with the Central African Republic. The Kinshasa government asked my brother Ewart and Jacques Roux to clear the river Bangui of crocodiles, which were eating people. They were to be paid for their services with the skins. Bruun took the skins by force and in recovering them, we shot Bruun. Then—

Who shot him?

My bearer and I. He was—

Your bearer was Prince James Knékwassé, one of your brother’s notorious Baluba Butchers?

You wouldn’t call him that to his face.

A giggle rippled through the courtroom.

Where did you shoot Bruun?

In the knees and elbows. He was—

Both knees and both elbows?

He was holding Mrs Roux before him, a kni—

Just answer the question, Mr Weber. Both knees and both elbows?

—a knife to her throat, Lance said firmly. All we could see of him were his knees and elbows.

Marlowe rocked on his heels while he considered. Lance knew what was going through the man’s mind: that Lance was not quite the country hick he appeared. Others usually took far longer to come to the same conclusion. Hmm. And then you just left Bruun to his fate?

No.

You applied first aid and took him to the nearest hospital, did you then?

It wasn’t my decision to leave him.

Oh? Whose was it?

Colonel Burger’s.

Colonel Burger of the notorious South African Bureau of State Security?

Yes.

What strange friends you have. What—

That’s a load of round objects.

In the courtroom a single black man laughed, then the others joined in. Marlowe turned to stare at them for a moment. He had noticed before, over the six days of the trial, that the general populace, far from supporting the prosecution in sending this white thug to the gallows, as he had fully expected, seemed inexplicably to be a fan club for Weber. What?

You’re talking balls. Lance bowed his head towards the judge’s rapped gavel. Colonel Burger had come to kill us because the South Africans don’t like bad publicity.

Your Honor, I should appreciate it if you would direct the accused to confine himself to answering questions.

The judge was definitely suppressing a smile. You’re on trial for your life, sir. Please behave accordingly.

Lance bowed his head again.

What happened to Bruun after you left him?

I didn’t leave him. I was in shock after the death of my brother who burned to death while trying to help us rescue Briony Roux from Bruun. I was taken away.

Stuffed with millions of dollars for the skins that had cost so many lives.

There was an objection and, after some acrimony flung back and forth, the offending passage was struck from the record. But, Lance thought, coming to understand how these things worked, the jury had heard it. After that there was an altercation between the lawyers about whether Lance could know, in law (as opposed to real life? Lance wondered), what happened to Bruun after Lance left. Marlowe won that one.

He was skinned alive by the women of the tribe he had abused, Lance said in delayed reply to the question.

Marlowe turned and took his time studying the faces of the jury before asking his next question. Are you surprised that he should want to kill you?

Lance did not appreciate being returned to old sorrows. They were private, none of the business of this fat snoop. I am amazed that he should kill my parents, whom he had never met, and who had done him no harm whatsoever.

But we have established that you didn’t know who sent your parents’ killers.

What we established is that I cannot prove it, a different matter altogether.

One of the juniors waved his finger admonishingly at Lance. It would not do for him to lose his temper. Lance took a deep breath. He knew what was coming next. Marlowe chose to drag it out by going the stony way.

And your friend Mrs Roux castrated Theodore Bruun, did she not?

He had raped her, and then given her to his soldiers. She was deranged by her ordeal. She too, was later killed by meat cleaver-wielding Chinese who, you claim, were not in Bruun’s employ.

Just answer one question at a time, will you! And then the tribeswomen blinded Bruun, and broke his eardrums, was it not so?

Yes.

And after the attack on your game reserve, on nothing more than suspicion, you went to Burma and killed this poor cripple?

Poor cripple, my arse. Sorry, Your Honor. Bruun was the will and the brains behind one of the largest opium smuggling conglomerates in the world and he had captured and was torturing a friend of mine, enjoying her pain through of electronic attachments to his body to replace his senses. He was a sadistic monster.

How did you kill him?

He sat in an armored-glass cube. We burned him in it, with white phosphor.

One of the juniors put his head in his hands.

We? Your friend Colonel Burger of the South African Bureau for State Security, the dreaded BOSS, a large number of his paramilitary police, the Baluba Butchers you inherited from your brother, and you?

Plus a few Thai government officials, not to mention others who had lost relatives to Bruun’s meat-cleavering hordes. It was an official party of sovereign governments who had invited my men to scout for them. That was not quite true, because he alone had known where to find Bruun, and used his singular knowledge to blackmail Burger into taking him. But let Marlowe prove that!

As a mercenary, eh?

Are we speaking English here? Mercenaries are paid and serve regardless of principle. I volunteered, unpaid, out of a sense of civic duty.

And personal revenge, hmm? Marlowe said almost lovingly.

Lance wisely remained silent.

If the record could show, please, that the accused refused to answer. The judge instructed the stenographer. Marlowe asked, Would you say, Mr Weber, that we have established that you are a violent man much given to taking the law into your own hands, and that you have undesirable international paramilitary and extra-legal connections who—

Objection, Your Honor. Kerridge did not rise but his voice was strong for such small man. If the prosecution wishes to indulge in demagoguery, he should return to Hyde Park.

This time Marlowe did not look around at the laughter. The judge banged his gavel for order, then ruled that the last remark from the prosecution be struck from the record.

Now, why were you carrying a rifle when you mur— when you killed Mr Ellimore? Marlowe continued.

Because I was out among wild animals, many of them carnivorous, in the open veldt. It was a rule on my game reserve, as it is on every other, that no one leaves the compound or any vehicle without carrying a rifle, unless accompanied by another person carrying a rifle.

So, when you saw this airplane, you raised your rifle to your shoulder and fired?

No. I fired from the hip.

I see. And you shot Bruun, holding a woman before him, in the knees and elbows. Did you hear in the expert testimony on Monday that thirteen bullet-holes were found in the wreckage of Mr Ellimore’s airplane?

Yes.

And Monday we also heard that, by the judgment of your peers, you are an unequalled marksman. How many bullets in the clip of your rifle?

Thirteen.

With such acknowledged marksmanship and time to fire thirteen bullets, why did you not choose to disable the plane instead of killing the pilot and sundering it into several thousand pieces?

I don’t think you understand. I didn’t have six months and twenty-twenty hindsight to make a decision. The plane was no further from me than you are now when I first saw it and I had less than a second to act before it took my head off. I fired—

Thank you. Thank you! Now, to the—

—instinctively in self-defense.

Marlowe bristled. Now look here—

Lance smiled at him. He hoped it was an ingratiating smile. I’ll tell you something else. You are badly briefed about rifles. How long do you think it takes to fire thirteen bullets from an automatic rifle?

I shall ask the questions!

Of course. And I shall answer them. In fact, I insist on answering.

The judge banged his gavel. The purpose of this trial is to arrive at the truth, a function in which defense and prosecution by tradition and legal obligation assist the court. I trust I shall not have to raise the point again. The judge drew a breath. Tell the court then, Mr Weber. How long does it take to fire thirteen bullets from an automatic rifle?

Less than three-quarters of a second, Your Honor. I was sprayed with burning fuel before I could even turn to run. I can show you the scars where the fuel burned me.

Perhaps your own counsel will ask you to, the judge said, then nodded to Marlowe. Pray continue.

Why should a gamekeeper, and, more, a renowned marksman, need an automatic rifle with, as we heard on Monday, an electronic scope?

Contrary to what you may have heard in London, good shots are not born, they are made. Before that expedition with my brother on which I first incurred the enmity of Theodore Bruun, I had never handled a rifle except very briefly when I was a conscript in the Army. Lance pointed to his Mannlicher on the exhibit table. That rifle belonged to Jacques Roux and he gave it to me, complete with the scope, to enable me to hit what I shot at. Without it I would not have survived that crocodile-hunting expedition. I have carried it ever since.

I see. That automatic rifle has sentimental value for you?

It is a gamekeeper’s tool, exactly like a Land-Rover, a first-aid kit, or a safari suit. Also, it is the only rifle I own or have ever owned. I have no feeling for firearms one way or the other. I keep that one simply because I do not see the point of spending money to replace a tool that works.

Well enough to kill.

And that is also good reason not to sentimentalize a rifle.

Marlowe, having scored a point, if not the one he would have preferred, changed the subject. I want to turn now to your relations with the widow of Matthew Ellimore.

Kerridge’s other junior decided to get into the act. Your Honor, the prosecutor is off on another wild goose chase of insinuation and innuendo. He failed the day before yesterday to establish that the witness had ever met Mrs Ellimore before her husband’s tragic accident. We on the other hand established conclusively that Mr Weber and Mrs Ellimore were perfect strangers at the time. This trawl through scandal serves no legal purpose.

On the contrary, Your Honor. I intend to establish two points, being that the accused cares absolutely nothing for the opinion of decent people or even governments and also that he benefited directly, financially and otherwise, from the late Mr Ellimore’s ivory.

I’ll allow this line of questioning, subject to removing any or all of it from the record after consideration.

Marlowe walked forward to stand less than a single step from Lance. His cologne was Eau Sauvage. Lance used it too, but very little of it as an aftershave. Marlowe, he concluded, must have bathed in the lemon-scented stuff.

Why did the widow Ellimore hire you to recover her late husband’s illegal ivory hoard from Lake Kivu?

The ivory itself was not illegal where it was stored in Lake Kivu—

Just answer the question? Why did she hire you?

She told you. She thought I was broke and, being a woman of principle, decided that, since her husband had cost me my livelihood, she should give me a job.

But you weren’t destitute. Despite the destruction of your game reserve, you were in fact wealthy from what the insurance company paid you for your dead elephants. Several millions wealthy.

I’d rather have my game reserve and my elephants and my overdraft back than a whole insurance company in my pocket. Kerridge raised a finger an inch off the table in admonishment. Lance glared at his barrister. Marlowe was getting under his skin, dragging his private sorrows into the public view, and now his financial affairs.

Has it occurred to you that she offered you the job of illegally exporting thirty tons of ivory from Africa because your action in mur— killing her husband demonstrated a certain ruthlessly anti-social frame of mind and the skill with firearms to enforce your will?

There was an objection to this but Lance said, I’ll answer. I accepted her stated reason as sincere. If you want to call her a liar, why didn’t you do it to her face when you had the opportunity?

The court exploded in laughter. Matthew Ellimore’s widow, beautiful and warm, but to aggressive strangers somehow forbidding, had obviously cowed the formidable Marlowe.

Marlowe ignored the derisive laughter and the question. In law it is always a question of he who laughs last. Did it not occur to you that there was something morally reprehensible in accepting work you did not even need from the widow of a man you had killed?

Yes, it did.

Kerridge looked up, on his lips what could be a thin cruel smile. It was the first time Lance had seen him smile in any manner whatever but Marlowe stood with his back to the defense counsel and did not see the warning sign.

Marlowe smiled at Lance and glanced at the jury before he spoke. The jury already knew Lance Weber had taken the job and brought the widow-woman’s ivory from Lake Kivu. But you took the job all the same?

It was an opportunity to use her ivory as bait to bring Bruun out into the open. Marlowe started asking another question but Lance raised his voice. I had to find Bruun or run for the rest of my life.

You killed the husband and used the widow as bait?

Once Bruun had heard about her ivory, her life was worth nothing, so I had to take her under my protection. Her servants were slaughtered. With meat cleavers.

At the back of the court someone giggled. The meat cleavers were becoming a gruesome joke.

All right, Mr Weber. You admit you knew it was illegal to export the ivory from Africa?

We bought several export permits, if you’re really interested. You can buy permits for most things, if you know how and where.

I see. You’re a racist?

Don’t be ludicrous, man, Lance snapped before his lawyers could object.

Marlowe continued smoothly, But you know how to corrupt African public officials? The two juniors, who had both risen, were subsiding.

No, I don’t. I go to Barclays Bank and the manager recommends someone suitable to do the job.

This time the court rocked with laughter. After much gaveling the judge regained order.

Marlowe was livid. Your Honor, I must insist that you control this witness. He seems to think this is a contest of wit and repartée rather than a trial.

But, Mr Marlowe, he is telling you the literal truth.

In any event, Lance added, we didn’t in the end use the bought export permits.

No, you just removed the ivory illegally, with the police and armies of Uganda, Ruanda, Burundi and Tanzania, plus the Tanzanian Navy, shooting at you—

Not all at the same time, Lance said modestly. A lot of Africa is inland, a long way from the sea, you know.

Once more the judge had to threaten to clear the court. The story of the recovery of the Widow Ellimore’s ivory is the stuff of which myth is made, the myth was already made — and here was the god of the myth making jokes about it. In Kenya Lance Weber was a legend in his own lifetime, and in a way that Marlowe should have understood better than Kerridge but did not because he had long since rejected the culture he was born into and which understood such things.

—with the Kenyan Navy standing by to arrest you if you entered Kenyan waters.

Hold on a minute there! I lodged an official complaint to that Kenyan gunboat because the Tanzanians were shooting at me well outside the twelve-mile limit.

Marlowe was speechless for the first time since he had lost his virginity.

And the only reason those people were shooting at me was because I wouldn’t pay them off with the greater part of the ivory. Lance was outraged. You know, you really should inform yourself of local conditions before you start flinging mud.

The judge said, I must remind the witness of his position.

It was not much of a reprimand and Marlowe’s mouth twitched disdainfully. Now, you hired eighty Swahili warriors and fitted them out with the latest automatic rifles. Why? To resist legally constituted army and police forces acting within the laws of their countries?

To resist bandits, whatever their uniforms. You want examples?

Why not? Marlowe agreed, giving him rope. The prosecutor was starting to hate the man before him.

Well, a lawyer in Ruanda explained that he was friendly with the police chief of Ruanda. If we gave him half the ivory, he would guarantee free passage. After I refused his offer, he set his uniformed hounds on us. They started shooting without asking any questions or offering us a chance to surrender. I could multiply such examples. This particular lawyer, incidentally, wore a tie striped exactly like yours. Perhaps he’s a member of your club.

This time Marlowe waited for the laughter to die, then continued his questioning without appealing to the judge. The Justice Ministry official who came to London to retain him had told him that it was essential to convict this Lance Weber, but apparently the message had not reached the judge, who seemed to be enjoying himself again.

And tell me, did you enjoy that as much as you enjoy being on trial for your life?

I didn’t enjoy that at all. I was scared shitless. I am scared shitless now.

The judge studied the far cornice.

Marlowe waited for laughter but it did not come. The audience in that courtroom knew about fear and respected it. Fear they recognized as a tool of survivors.

And to command your fearless Swahili, you hired several of your late mercenary brother’s Baluba Butchers. Is that not so?

No.

I remind you that on Tuesday your servant Mwanzo, also known as The Sharpshooter, told us you were accompanied by no fewer than three of the fearsome Knékwassé brothers. Are you now calling your servant a liar?

No.

Your Honor, the witness is hostile.

We are not surprised, Mr Marlowe. Mr Weber, could you please resolve this apparent inconsistency regarding the three Princes Knékwassé.

Certainly, sir. They did accompany us, as Mwanzo said. But I did not hire them. Out of loyalty to my late brother, whom they promised to keep me out of trouble, they volunteered for the expedition to see I came to no harm.

There were chuckles in the courtroom. See, even your claque does not believe you. Without waiting for a reply, Marlowe continued. Do you deny that you left a trail of dead men on that expedition?

Their own greed left them dead on the trail. Many of them killed each other and those my men and I killed had first shot at us.

But you had eighty armed and trained Swahili—

Seventy, actually. The rest of my staff were cooks and stewards. We armed them only in emergencies, otherwise it interfered with Mrs Ellimore’s smooth running of the kitchen. As you experienced for yourself, she is not a woman to be lightly—

Yes, yes, thank you! I put it to you that you didn’t take seventy armed men with you without expecting violence.

The Kenyan Police does not expect violence, it is there to deter it.

Surely you understand that there is a vast difference between the police force of a sovereign nation and your private army.

Of course I do. But what you make every effort not to understand is that where I was traveling, there is no law, regardless of what uniforms they wear. If a man is so rotten that I can buy a breach of his contract with his employer and his law for half my earthly goods, what is to stop him being so greedy that he takes the rest, and perhaps my life as well to prevent me naïvely complaining to higher authority with whom he might then have to split the loot? I’ll tell you. Nothing, but my rifle and those of my Swahili. Only a fool travels unarmed on the west side of Lake Kivu.

Marlowe thought he saw the judge nodding agreement. Certainly at least two jurors were nodding. Marlowe also noticed that the young Arab behind Kerridge seemed extremely pleased and that Kerridge himself had stopped making notes, always a bad sign. He decided to change tack.

Then tell me, did you and Mrs Ellimore discuss the propriety of jumping into her late husband’s bed?

The red stripe in the man’s tie filled Lance’s vision.

Marlowe had been accusing this man of violence, and was attempting to extract his life in retribution, but he did not expect to become a target. He did not see Lance’s hands reach out for him but the next moment he was raised by the lapels of his jacket so that his face was level with Lance’s; the witness box was three steps above the floor of the court and the prosecutor’s feet swung clear by that space. Lance shook him as a terrier shakes a rat, the lawyer’s head jerking back and forth. Court attendants hung on Lance’s arms but he scarcely noticed them. Mr Kerridge stood to see better; his lower lip hung open an eighth of an inch, for such a controlled man a vast display of emotion. Nasheer walked into the well of the court and spoke to the judge, whose mouth was hanging frankly open. The judge leaned over the bench to listen, then said, Mr Weber!

Lance turned his head to look at him and the judge realized that, far from being in a mad rage, Weber was coldly administering punishment. He shivered. There were tales about this man among the uncultured and unwashed, as well as in the upper reaches of landed and professional society. Mr Weber, please put Mr Marlowe down. He will apologize to you for his improper remark but cannot do so until you release him.

Lance did not just release the unfortunate QC, he drove him down as if to plant him permanently in the floor of the courtroom. Marlowe collapsed to the floor with a gasping sigh. Lance looked down at the hands of the two policemen who held his arms and they hurriedly let go.

That man very big juju, one juror said to another in a voice that was