Tom straightened his tie and knocked on the dark blue door set in the white stone facade of the Belgravia townhouse. The place was worth a fortune, though he was not surprised by the size or location of Robert Greeves’s London residence. He knew from his briefing that the assistant minister was extremely wealthy, in addition to being a successful politician.
Greeves’s family was old money and, unlike many of their breed, they knew how to make a quid as well as spend it. Greeves’s wife, Janet, also came from a well-off family, although hers had made their money in trade, running a nation-wide chain of supermarkets. She came from a long line of party faithful and Tom had read that she had served on the executive.
A girl in her late teens opened the door. She had a pierced nose, a studded leather collar around her neck, jet black hair and a long black dress on. ‘Dad!’ she yelled. ‘I think it’s your bodyguard.’
‘Protection officer, ma’am,’ Tom said. The girl rolled her eyes and turned without a word of greeting and walked down a corridor. Tom smiled. It seemed the picture-perfect political family had at least one gothic sheep.
Greeves appeared, shrugging on his suit jacket and stuffing a piece of toast into his mouth. ‘I want you in by eleven, Samantha,’ he called back through his breakfast. ‘Even though I’m not going to be in the country, I’ll call you.’
Tom looked over his shoulder to make sure all was well on the street and saw Greeves’s official driver, Ray Butler, in the car with the engine running. Greeves had a briefcase and overnight bag in the hallway, ready to go. Tom made no move to pick up the bags, and he’d instructed Ray to stay in the ministerial vehicle.
Sally, the other protection officer who worked with Nick on Greeves’s UK team, was standing next to her BMW five series, its exhaust curling around her legs as the chilly morning breeze caught it. She nodded to Tom. Sally was acting as close protection officer, while Tom was the PPO — principal protection officer. In Nick’s absence he was also the team leader.
‘Hello. Robert Greeves,’ the minister said politely, though completely unnecessarily. ‘Don’t mind my daughter. She can be almost civil when you get to know her well. She’s at college, stays here in the London house when she’s not out clubbing. My wife Janet’s at our country place in Buckinghamshire.’
‘Detective Sergeant Tom Furey, sir.’ Tom shook the minister’s hand. It was the strong grip and eye contact, Tom thought, of a man who had spent a large proportion of the past twenty years shaking people’s hands for a living.
‘You and I should have a word, Tom, about how things are going to work between us. It’s a busy day, as usual. Where’s Ray?’
‘In the car’s the best place for him, sir. With the engine running.’
Greeves looked at him for a second, then down at his bags, before picking them up. Tom wasn’t fazed. If Nick did things differently — let the chauffeur act like a bellboy — then that was his business. Tom moved to one side as Greeves walked out past him. Tom pulled the house door closed, then said into the microphone of his radio, ‘Moving now, Sal.’
‘Okay, Tom.’
Tom moved ahead of Greeves, opening the back door of the dark blue Jaguar saloon. Greeves tossed his bags in ahead of him and climbed in. Tom closed the door. He’d once been protecting a newly promoted minister who’d insisted that he should sit in the front seat, next to the driver, and that Tom should sit in the back. Also, he’d told Tom he didn’t want his protection officer opening the door for him, like a footman. Tom had politely but firmly explained that the reason he acted as he did was not out of courtesy. ‘I control the door, sir,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t get in until I know you’re secure and the street is clear, and you don’t get out, sir, until I know it’s clear outside.’
Tom took another look up and down the street. ‘Clear, Tom,’ Sally said into his earpiece. When they were talking on the back-to-back channel, for interpersonal communication, it was first names. Tom looked back and saw she was waiting outside her car until he was in the front of the Jag. She was good, even if Nick had let things slide. The Jag indicated and pulled away from the kerb, with Sally following in the BMW.
Tom scanned the road ahead, looking for anything unusual — cars or vans double parked, people on the street who took an interest in them.
‘Funny business about Nick,’ Greeves said from the back seat.
‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said, without looking back at the minister. ‘We’ve got detectives out looking for him and following up leads.’ Tom checked the wing mirror and saw Sally was close behind them.
‘I’m starting to become concerned about his welfare, Tom. Nick seemed a bit of a lad in his spare time, but he was never a second late for a job, and that counts a hell of a lot to me. What he got up to in his own time was his own business, but I’m alarmed at hearing reports of investigations in strip clubs and so forth.’
Tom was surprised that Greeves had that much detail on the investigation, although he certainly had the clout and the motive to keep himself informed. A threat to his protection officer could mean a risk to Greeves himself, if someone was trying to get at Nick or compromise him in some way. Greeves had enemies the world over, as well as plenty at home.
‘Nick and I got on,’ Greeves went on, ‘because he was good at his job and he was always ahead of the game. I know of your background — it’s similar to Nick’s — and I’m sure you’ll do just as good a job.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said dutifully. It was the sort of welcome he’d expected. Robert Greeves might be well known, rich and powerful, but he was just a man to Tom, flesh and blood who could fall to a bullet or a bomb or any number of other threats as easily as anyone else in the street. It was simply Tom’s job to see that it didn’t happen on his shift.
‘What did you think of Africa?’
That took Tom by surprise. ‘Very nice, sir.’
‘A man of few words, I see, but well chosen. Are you hooked by her?’
‘Her, sir?’
‘Africa.’
Tom thought of the drinks under a setting red sun, hearing the lion calling in the distance, seeing the leopard and its prey. He thought of Sannie van Rensburg, even though they’d parted on frosty terms. ‘Could be, sir,’ he said.
‘Well, if poor old Nick doesn’t show himself soon this won’t be the last time you get to go to the dark continent.’
Tom pulled the printout of the day’s schedule from the inside pocket of his suit coat and glanced down at it. As Greeves said, it was a typically busy day for a minister, even though parliament had risen the previous day. Their first appointment, where they were headed now, was a fundraising breakfast in the city, aimed at garnering and shoring up donations for the coming election campaign. After that was a last-minute briefing from the defence company vying to sell aircraft to the South Africans, followed by a media conference at the company’s offices with its chairman; a visit to an HIV-AIDS clinic in Islington — a cheque presentation of some sort; afternoon tea with selected constituents in the Westminster office at Portcullis House; and then, finally, off to Heathrow for the evening flight to Johannesburg. Tom’s bag was in the boot of the police car. He wouldn’t see home again for another five days. He’d call Charlie Sheather in Cape Town to make sure things were ready there. It was another reminder that this was a shoestring operation. Sally couldn’t come to Africa because she was due leave and had a daughter about to go into hospital to have her tonsils out.
The breakfast function was Tom’s first opportunity to see Greeves address an audience in the flesh. Tom had sat through hundreds, maybe thousands of these types of speeches while protecting various politicians over the years. He considered himself a cynic when it came to politics, believing there was little to differentiate either of the main parties. He would have classed himself a left-leaning conservative, and that meant he might as well close his eyes and use a pin to pick the people he voted for. It was rare that someone could hold his attention in a speech, especially as part of Tom’s job was to keep a weather eye on the audience, catering staff and anyone else in the room other than the person doing the talking. This crowd were invitees who had paid five hundred quid a head to listen to Robert Greeves. They were blue pinstripe to the core. While Tom didn’t drop his guard he did keep an ear open to the words coming from the man behind the lectern. He wanted to learn as much about Greeves as he could during the day.
‘Does it really matter,’ Greeves was saying, leaning forward, elbows on the lectern in a bid to get closer to his suited audience, ‘if there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — chemicals, poison gas bombs, Scuds full of nerve agents, et cetera, et cetera?’
Greeves waited during the seconds of hushed silence. Tom half felt like chirping up and saying, ‘Yes, it bloody well does matter, since the government sent us into a war based on a dossier of fiction and half-truths.’
Greeves seemed almost to be looking right at Tom when he said, ‘There was, in fact, one WMD in that country that we know of for sure. Saddam Hussein. Is it right for Britain or the United States to sit back and do nothing while a man gases his own people, assassinates dissidents by the score; while his sons torture, rape and massacre at their whim? No, ladies and gentlemen, it was not right to deal with Iraq in the way we did. It was not right to stop at the gates of Baghdad in 1991; it was not right to abandon the marsh Arabs when they rose against Saddam after that war; and it was not right to say, “Leave him to his own devices, eventually one day his people will wake up and get rid of him. It’s not our fight.”’
Tom had heard the argument before — and it continued to smack of bandaid policy to him. This government was still trying to convince the people that it had been right to get involved in Iraq, even if it wasn’t for the reasons originally put forward. Tom hadn’t become a convert, but he was impressed by the way Greeves was putting his case forward. He went on, as he had done in parliament the day before, to personalise the conflict, to make it about standing up for the people of Iraq — presumably the majority — who were sick of the bombings, the fighting, the executions.
Metropolitan police protection officers had been to Iraq and Afghanistan, accompanying the Prime Minister, Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. Tom hadn’t been picked for these teams as he had yet to renew his qualification on the Heckler amp; Koch sub machinegun — the weapon he would have carried on such an assignment. He’d go if he was told to but, unlike some of the younger officers, he wasn’t volunteering.
Greeves alluded again to the bomb blast in Enfield and Tom couldn’t help but listen in now; he had felt the heat of the blast, seen the charred remains of the computer expert wheeled out.
‘We’ll probably never know what the terrorists were planning when that brave member of the security services lost his life in that house, but what we do know, ladies and gentlemen, is that Britain remains at war with the forces of evil. All of us, not just our tireless security services, need to remain vigilant, committed and resolute in our determination that Britain will not yield to terror; that we will support and agitate for democracy in places around the world where decent people can only dream of such a concept, and that we will remember all those who put their lives on the line every day for people like you and people like me.’
The applause was as close as Tom had seen to thunderous in many years. He, too, found himself on his feet, not wanting to be seen as the only person sitting, but also oddly moved by the speech, especially the last line. A young banker at his table, his face still spotty, who had introduced himself to Tom and therefore knew that he was Greeves’s protection officer, nodded to him and mouthed, ‘Well done.’ Tom felt embarrassed.
‘He’s good,’ Sally said. ‘Too bad he can’t get his bleedin’ children to behave as well as this mob,’ she added as an aside.
Sally left first, as Greeves moved from table to table, shaking hands with the Party faithful. Tom stayed just behind him, at his shoulder.
‘Vehicles ready. All clear outside.’
‘Thanks, Sal,’ he replied into his radio. ‘Moving now.’
Greeves read The Times in the backseat on the drive to the aircraft manufacturer’s headquarters in a business park in Ealing. Tom and Sally repeated their routine on arrival. They waited in an anteroom in the office tower while Greeves had his meeting with the company’s executives. Tom knew the contract was important, not only for local jobs, but for Britain’s standing in the international defence and aviation industry — hence the minister’s personal lobbying in South Africa.
The press conference was held in a purpose-built room on the ground floor. Tom moved in with Greeves and positioned himself off to one side of the podium, where the minister sat with the chief executive officer and chairman of the board. The company’s PR people said all of the reporters in the conference were known to the firm and their identities had been double-checked. From what Tom knew of the media and its workings, this conference was poorly attended — only half-a-dozen reporters and he recognised none of them. No one from TV or radio, and none of the usual Westminster gallery hacks were present. These were defence correspondents, most of them from industry magazines.
The company’s chairman, an ex-Royal Air Force air commodore, gave a long-winded introduction about the merits of the jet trainer on offer to South Africa and Greeves followed with a succinct spiel about the importance of creating British jobs and maintaining good relations with Africa’s most stable democracy.
The questions were a mix of technical probing about the jet’s reported avionics flaws and points of clarification regarding revenues, jobs and the possibility of more sales on the African continent if the South Africans came on board. When the conference was nearly over, one reporter, a young man with red hair and glasses, said, ‘Mr Greeves, why is it that you’ve made fourteen visits to southern Africa in the last four years?’
Greeves looked slightly off balance as he reached for the glass of water on the table in front of him. Tom noted that two of the other reporters looked askance at their colleague, as if they, too, were surprised he had asked something out of the ordinary. Clearly these defence journalists were a different breed.
‘Africa’s important to Britain,’ Greeves began, quickly regaining his composure. ‘We have, of course, strong historical links to many of the countries on the continent and, if you read the papers,’ this brought a chuckle from a few of the other members of the press, ‘there are also many serious, pressing issues which require the attention and input of this government.’
‘Why so often for pleasure, as well as business?’ the young man persisted.
‘Who is he?’ Tom whispered to the company’s media relations director, who was hovering off to the side of the podium.
‘Michael Fisher, the World.’
If the media was an ‘estate’, as the Americans put it, then the World was the gardener’s snot rag. It was tits and arse and barely legal page-three girls. What, Tom wondered, were they doing here?
‘Where I spend my holidays is my business. Now, as I was saying before, the important points to remember about this contract are that it’s good for Britain — four hundred jobs in the factory in the north; good for South Africa — they get a modern, safe, state-of-the-art aircraft at a very good price; and it’s good for British industry and technology. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.’
Greeves had shut down the media conference expertly. Tom was impressed. Tom spotted the reporter, Michael Fisher, springing from his chair as Greeves left the conference room. Tom slid in behind the man he was protecting. He didn’t say a word or lay a finger on Fisher, but the man quickly got the message that he would get no closer to the minister. The PR woman moved in to corral the journalists as the officials walked through a security door back into the bowels of the building.
‘I’m sorry, Robert, if that upstart caused you any concern,’ the company chairman said as Tom followed them. It seemed the RAF man knew Greeves personally.
‘No problem at all, Hugh. The opposition ran a line a few months ago about “taxpayer-funded safaris”. The World bit and even had a cartoon of me in a pith helmet,’ Greeves laughed. ‘I do love Africa, but that’s not why I travel there for business, and I’m keen to shut those sorts of questions down as quickly as possible. I do not want the people of Britain thinking I’m using my position to get free air miles.’
‘Of course not,’ the chairman said. ‘I’ll put out a statement today, if you like, saying that you refused to allow us to pick up the bill for your accommodation at the safari lodge.’
‘Thanks, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Greeves said.
‘Why not, it’s true. I can also mention the company — at your suggestion — sponsoring an AIDS education program and providing funding for a work-place clinic for the workers we will employ in South Africa if we get the deal.’
‘All good stuff,’ Greeves agreed, ‘but I want to downplay this visit. When you win the contract, go large with it in the north — that’s where it’s the most important. I want to see your factory expanding, Hugh. I’m not the story here, your men and women on the factory floor are.’
Tom thought he sounded like he actually meant it.
The visit to the HIV-AIDS clinic in Islington was a low-key affair. The job was over in half an hour and consisted of Greeves meeting the director, his staff and a couple of outpatients.
Tom had expected there to be media present, perhaps even one of those naff big cheques for Greeves to hand over as part of a naff photo opportunity. There was neither. Tom had thought it odd, in any case, that a defence minister would be handing over funding for something which was clearly a health ministry responsibility.
As they drove through London to Westminster, Greeves finished annotating the last of a stack of briefing notes he had pulled from his briefcase. Tom saw his chance to raise the concerns he had about the lack of protection officers. ‘Sir, I’d like to bring some additional security equipment with us to South Africa — a passive alarm system which I’d set up on the door and balcony of your suite at Tinga.’
‘Are you asking me or telling me, Tom?’
‘It’s not intrusive, sir, and I wouldn’t be monitoring you, only the access to your room. It’s my recommendation, sir, given that we’re one man down on the team.’
‘Very well.’ Greeves signed another file and closed his bag.
Their car pulled into the security parking area beneath Portcullis House, the multistorey labyrinth of parliamentary offices opposite the Palace of Westminster but joined to it by underground passageways.
During the afternoon tea in the anteroom of Greeves’s offices, Tom introduced himself to Helen MacDonald, the press secretary. Tom was curious about why the minister was presenting a cheque to a healthcare organisation which was clearly outside his portfolio.
‘It’s his own money,’ Helen said, sipping a cup of tea while Greeves entertained some housewives, local businessmen and a gaggle of grey-haired grannies.
‘Really?’ Tom was surprised. ‘How much?’
‘He wouldn’t want me to say, even if I knew — but you can bet it’d be at least five figures, from what I know of his past donations to charity. He’s a true philanthropist, is our Robert.’
Tom nodded, impressed. He knew Greeves was rich, but he didn’t know that he was generous as well. ‘Why didn’t he get some publicity for it? Help raise awareness of AIDS and all that?’
‘I used to try to get him to let me tell the media, but it’s a firm rule of his never to publicise his personal donations.’
‘I suppose he doesn’t want to be hit up by every other charity in the country,’ Tom speculated.
Helen shook her head. ‘No. You know, I think he does it in private because it’s the right thing to do. He’s not like any other politician I’ve ever come across, in that respect. Not cynical — at least, not in that way.’
Tom told Helen about the questioning from the journalist, Fisher. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ she said. ‘They’re flogging a dead horse, but do try to keep him out the way of photographers in South Africa. The World ’s gunning for him for some reason.’
There was nothing Tom could do to stop anyone taking a picture of Robert Greeves in a public place, especially in another country, other than try to alter their routes to avoid the paparazzi. To try to outrun them could be fatal — as had been the case with Princess Diana — and to manhandle reporters and photographers who weren’t actually physically threatening someone was considered to be assault. Still, Tom held his tongue and simply nodded to Helen. He was sure she knew the limitations he worked under.
Tom travelled armed with his Glock, Asp, knife and ammunition as they passed through Heath-row escorted by two uniformed police — one with a Heckler amp; Koch — and a security officer from British Airways special services. Once through immigration he, Greeves and the minister’s policy advisor, Bernard Joyce, parked themselves in the first-class lounge for the hour before departure.
The flight was uneventful and Tom slept well in the first-class seat behind Greeves, though he couldn’t drink alcohol.
At Johannesburg they were first off the aircraft, and the British Ambassador to South Africa was waiting on the air bridge, along with the South African Minister for Defence, Patrick Dule. Sannie was there, protecting the minister, and she nodded a curt hello to Tom. They were led by airport staff and security to a VIP lounge, where their passports were stamped by immigration officers and the two ministers had coffee with the British ambassador, who would not be accompanying them to Kruger.
South African soldiers in dress uniform, incongruously armed with umbrellas, were waiting downstairs outside the terminal to cover the official party for the couple of metres to two cars parked waiting in the torrential rain. They were driven across the taxiways to a South African Air Force Boeing business jet VIP transport aircraft, which was waiting on the Tarmac with its engines already turning. This time they would be flying to the Kruger National Park. Tom sat at the back of the aircraft, but was still three seats away from Sannie, so he couldn’t converse with her.
There was no one from the company which manufactured the jet trainers travelling with Greeves; this was ostensibly a political visit and, while Greeves would talk up the merits of the UK bid and its benefits to the British economy, he would also be discussing other defence issues with Dule.
Dule was an affable, urbane, rotund man in a tailored designer suit with a crisp white shirt, burgundy silk tie and matching handkerchief in his pocket. Tom remembered Sannie’s bitterness about the poverty in which so many South Africans still lived. Majority rule hadn’t brought fresh water and decent housing to all, but it had made some well fed and well off, Tom reflected.
Tom had been unable to put Sannie out of his mind completely these past couple of days. He’d also been unable to shake the feeling that something good had passed him by, and he wanted at least to make amends with her, if not pick up where he thought they had left off. She looked cool and sexy in her lightweight cream business suit. He had tried a smile on her as she took her seat on the aircraft, but she ignored him. It was annoying. For some reason he felt compelled to tell her that he had not slept with Carla Sykes. It was none of Sannie’s business, but he sensed she thought less of him because of what Carla had said.
Carla had some cheek, he mused, telling Sannie she believed she had left an earring in his suite at Tinga. Perhaps it was because she had been with Nick — and somehow he felt he was intruding on something — or perhaps it was just her over-the-top personality, but he didn’t feel she should be the first woman he slept with after Alex’s death. He had felt the stirrings of physical arousal when they had been drinking together and Carla had laid her hand on his thigh, but he had put the inevitable thoughts out of his head. He’d never had sex while away on a job; he’d been faithful to Alex during their marriage, and since then the opportunity had never arisen.
He’d politely fobbed off Carla, saying he was tired from his flight and his game drive. Undeterred, she had said, ‘Well, that’s one cup of coffee you owe me when you come back with your VIP.’ He’d turned her around and gently ushered her out of his room.
He wondered, as the aircraft took off, if Carla would still be interested in him when they returned. She had said, as she’d left, ‘I can’t promise not to try again.’
‘Mint?’ Bernard Joyce, Greeves’s defence policy advisor, asked him from across the narrow aisle. ‘Helps me unblock my ears when we take off and land.’
‘No thanks,’ Tom said.
Helen MacDonald had told him: ‘You’ll like being away with Bernard. He’s a scream. Camp as a row of tents, and sharp as a tack. He’s ex-Royal Navy — youngest second-in-command of a nuclear submarine ever.’
‘I hate Africa,’ Bernard said, leaning across. ‘Bloody dust and heat, and all those wild animals.’
‘I saw a leopard on my first visit, just a few days ago,’ Tom said.
‘Bully for you. Completely unnatural, if you ask me, driving around with no doors and windows, three feet away from lions and hyenas and the like.’
‘As opposed to cruising around half a mile under the water?’
‘Ah,’ Joyce said, raising an eyebrow, ‘I imagine our big-mouthed Kiwi spin doctor has been giving you the gossip on everyone?’
‘It’s all been good so far,’ Tom assured him.
‘I’m sure it has. We’re an odd bunch, we loyal foot-soldiers of Robert Greeves, but he’s a great man, Tom, don’t doubt it.’
He nodded. He was starting to think so himself.
Three of Tinga’s open-sided Land Cruisers were waiting at the Skukuza airstrip.
Once the official airport for the Kruger National Park, the Skukuza runway, which was inside the park’s borders, had been reserved for private charter aircraft since the building of a new regional international airport near Nelspruit about forty kilometres to the south.
‘Welcome, Minister Dule, Minister Greeves,’ Carla Sykes said. She looked sophisticated and attractive, despite the shimmering heat haze rising from the Tarmac. Tom reminded himself to concentrate on the job.
At Dule’s urging, Greeves posed for a photograph of the two of them, with three air force flight attendants, in front of the Boeing.
‘Oh, I found my earring by the way,’ Carla said both to Sannie and Tom as they all waited for the picture to be taken. ‘It wasn’t in Tom’s room after all, it was in the library!’
Sannie van Rensburg wondered who Carla had been fucking in the library. She was still angry at herself and her petty jealousy of the woman, and she tried to concentrate on the broad back and bald black head of Patrick Dule. She was in the back row of seats of the Land Cruiser carrying the two dignitaries, while Tom sat in front, next to Duncan Nyari.
There was something about Carla that grated on her — many things, in fact — but it was hard to fathom why she felt as strongly as she did about the woman. So she slept around, big deal, but it didn’t seem appropriate, she thought, for a woman in her position to flaunt herself in front of guests, particularly when they were there on business, as Tom Furey had been.
She chided herself again. Hadn’t she almost slept with her workplace superior? How professional was that? Anyway, all these thoughts only served to remind her that business and pleasure most definitely did not mix. It was good to be back in the bush again so soon. The sights and smells and general feeling of wellbeing she got from the Kruger Park almost made up for the fact that she would be missing her kids by nightfall. Little Christo had recovered from his head wound and was back at school. He’d asked if she would be seeing Tom, the Englishman who played football. ‘I want to show him my scar,’ he’d said.
Tom glanced back at her. She looked away, scanning the bush for wildlife and other lurking dangers.
Three of Tinga’s staff were waiting for the vehicles. Two carried platters filled with cool drinks; the third, a tray stacked with cold hand towels. Carla leapt from the Land Cruiser she had shared with the ministers’ staffers and started organising other employees to escort everyone to their rooms. The politicians were looked after first. The South African minister’s policy advisor was an Indian woman called Indira. Sannie found her brusque and bossy, unlike the minister, who was actually quite charming.
‘Sannie, won’t you please take my bag to my room. I have to go and check the meeting room for the minister,’ Indira said to her.
‘I’m sure the staff can do that,’ Sannie replied. She wasn’t the minister’s bag carrier, and she certainly wasn’t Indira’s lackey either.
‘Hello there,’ Tom said, walking up to the two women. ‘Sannie, have you let Captain Tshabalala know that we’ve arrived?’
‘Of course,’ she said, knowing she sounded irritated and seeing that he picked up on her feelings. She had overreacted, but he was telling her how to do her job now. She guessed that Tom was simply trying to ensure everything was being done by the book, and he couldn’t have known that Indira had just irked her as well. ‘Yes, Tom,’ she said, her tone softer now. ‘I’ve made the call.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a stroll along the board-walks on either side of the lodges.’
‘I’ll check out the conference room. The meeting’s not due to start for half an hour — it’ll give the politicians time to freshen up.’
He nodded, looked at her as though there was something else he wanted to say, but she guessed the presence of Indira, who was squawking into her cell phone beside her, stopped him. He left and she went off to the conference room, leaving the bags with Indira, who gave her a pained look, which Sannie ignored.
Sannie watched Tom walk away. She regretted snapping at him and wanted to tell him what Christo had said. Perhaps she would try to be a bit more civil to him later on. They might have time to chat while their principals were locked in their meeting and working lunch.
A maid was placing jugs of juice and iced water in the private room, but otherwise it was empty. Sannie walked out onto the deck and surveyed the bush around the lodge’s function area. There were no animals in sight, and no sign of spoor or flattened grass to indicate anything or anyone had been circling the room in the last couple of days. It was all clear.
When Sannie returned to the central reception area she saw Tom walking back from the far end of the boardwalk, but he was not alone. Carla was walking by his side — very close, as the walkway was quite narrow. She laughed, too loudly, at something he had just said and the cackle sounded to Sannie like a hyena’s call. Carla put her hand on Tom’s arm and any charitable thoughts Sannie had had disappeared.
‘Can’t wait to get the VIPs sorted,’ Carla said in an exaggerated stage whisper to Sannie as they approached her, ‘then we can all settle down to some lunch and gossip.’