Dictator Read Online Free PDF Page B

nothing to fear. On the other hand, if you even try to screw with me I will not forget it and I will get even, however long it takes. So, now that you know what kind of a man you are dealing with, are you still interested?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Carver.
    ‘Good. When can you leave?’
    ‘When’s the next flight?’

10
     
    The eastern border of Malemba resembles a crudely drawn semicircle, ringed by its neighbour Mozambique much as a spanner grips a nut. About fifty miles inside Mozambique, astride the river Zambezi, lies the town of Tete.
    Carver arrived there at nine in the morning after a twenty-hour journey from Geneva, changing planes twice en route. He was expecting to be hit by a physical blast of heat and humidity as he stepped from the plane: Tete is only sixteen degrees south of the equator, well within the Tropic of Capricorn. He knew too that Mozambique was one of the poorest nations on earth, devastated by more than a decade of armed struggle against its former Portuguese masters, and a fifteen-year civil war that had killed almost a million people. Yet the air was pleasantly warm and dry, and the small terminal building, which rose from the runway tarmac in a series of whitewashed blocks topped by sharply angled roofs, was surprisingly clean and well maintained.
    He’d cleared passport control and customs and walked out into the arrivals area when a short, wiry, moustachioed white man wearing a faded safari shirt over a pair of khaki shorts came up to him, pulled a cigarette from his mouth and asked ‘You Carver?’ in an abrasive colonial accent.
    Carver said nothing.
    ‘Flattie Morrison,’ said the man, chucking the glowing butt on to the floor and grinding it under the heel of an ancient walking boot before sticking out his right hand. ‘Howzit? We’ve been expecting you.’
    ‘Samuel Carver.’
    Morrison turned and led the way through a crowd of people, exchanging greetings in what Carver presumed was the local dialect; shooing away anyone who looked as if they were about to try to sell something; cursing and occasionally swatting the children who constantly darted around them.
    ‘The munts here are all right, but they are the worst fucking thieves in the whole of Africa,’ Morrison said, shoving a diminutive boy out of the way. ‘They will jack the clothes off your back and you will not even notice until you feel the wind on your arse. What the hell, hey? They have no economy, so if they want some kite, what else can they do?’
    ‘Kite?’
    ‘Money … greenbacks!’ Morrison rolled his tongue round the word with enormous relish then grinned, his upper lip spreading in a flat line across his face, exposing a line of gleaming white teeth below his grey-flecked ginger moustache. He tapped his right cheek. ‘See this smile, hey?’ he said, then clipped another child with the back of his hand without slowing his stride or pausing for breath. ‘That is why they call me Flattie. In Malemba, a flattie is a crocodile. And he gives you a great big smile just like this … right before he kills you. Hahaha!’
    They walked out to Morrison’s car, a battered old Nissan Sunny, its once red paint faded to a washed-out pink, streaked with rust and punctuated with dents and holes.
    ‘Sorry if the wheels are a bit rough for your taste,’ said Morrison, getting in the driver’s side then leaning across to shove open the passenger door. ‘No point having a fancy new car here, boet. The munts strip it like fucking vultures on a corpse, and if it breaks down out there in the bush, there’s no bugger qualified to fix it. But this old heap? A baboon could learn to service it.’
    After a couple of failed attempts, the engine coughed into life like an elderly man waking from an afternoon nap, and they headed out of the airport towards the city.
    ‘So,’ said Morrison once they were on the open road, ‘you are here to get the girl, hey?’
    Carver nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’
    ‘By whatever means