74

The timing had been split second, and even then it had been a close-run thing. But with the help of two of Fisherman Zheng’s men, both armed and ready to use their weapons, Moses Mabeki had managed to get Zalika Stratten into the delivery van parked just outside the Gushungos’ house before Carver came out of the building. From that point on it had been a simple case of misdirection. He’d made a show of slamming the boot shut loud enough for Carver to hear, and standing right by it so that the Englishman would come to the obvious conclusion that the girl was in there. Then he’d taken the scenic route, leading Carver down Route Twisk, while the van went on the fastest possible highways from Hon Ka Mansions to Aberdeen.

It had gone straight to the waterfront where Zheng’s men opened up the rear cargo, removed Zalika Stratten and led her down a flight of quayside steps to a small motorboat that was bobbing on the water below. She’d lost her ridiculous sunglasses as well as her phone. Her hair had come unpinned and now hung round her shoulders. She looked much more like her true self, but dressed more cheaply than usual.

The boat had sped away, jinking between the other craft crammed into the narrow stretch of water between Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau island on the other side of the harbour. It had pulled up alongside the streamlined, dart-like hull of a Sunseeker Predator 52 performance motoryacht moored off the Aberdeen Marina Club. Once again, there were armed men all around Zalika as she was led aboard.

The motorboat had then sped away again, only to return fifteen minutes later with Moses Mabeki.

The Sunseeker weighed anchor, eased its way through the harbour and then, when it reached the open sea, the skipper opened up the throttle and it raced away westwards, hitting thirty knots as it ate up the twenty-five-mile journey to the former Portuguese colony of Macau.

The boat was one of Fishermen Zheng’s favourite toys, and this voyage gave him particular pleasure. He had brought a diamond dealer along to inspect the stones Mabeki had agreed to sell him. The dealer assured him, in a Hoklo dialect incomprehensible even to the vast majority of Chinese, that they were worth almost twenty million US dollars. On Friday night, Zheng and Mabeki had shaken hands at six million, subject to delivery and acceptance. Now the money was paid directly into Mabeki’s personal account in the Cayman Islands. Everyone was happy.

Mabeki made his excuses and went to the cabin where the next stage of the extraction plan he had agreed with Zheng was due to take place. A doctor – Hoklo, like all Zheng’s associates, and thus guaranteed to keep his silence – injected Zalika with a heavy dose of nitrazepam, which knocked her out cold.

They were met at the Macau shore by an ambulance driven by two more of Zheng’s men, dressed as uniformed paramedics. The ambulance took Mabeki and his unconscious companion to Macau International Airport, which is specifically geared to the private aviation needs of the high-rollers who gamble their money at Macau’s twenty-eight casinos. There, a Gulfstream 550 ultra-long-range jet, equipped with medical facilities and with a doctor and nurse on its crew, was waiting to fly Mabeki and the comatose Zalika to a medical facility near Paris. No one enquired why she needed to travel so far for treatment. The airport’s officials had long since become accustomed to the foibles of the rich.

An hour into the flight, the pilot was re-routed on to a new southwesterly course, towards Sindele airport, Malemba.

They were barely two thousand miles from their destination when Zalika Stratten began very groggily to wake up. She cast bleary eyes around the cabin and asked where on earth she was.