Predator. Wilbur Smith

Carl alive! But Cross was dumb. He made two mistakes.’

      ‘Yeah, what kind of mistakes?’

      ‘First, he didn’t feed me to the crocodiles also. I wouldn’t have known anything about it if he had. I was out, man, pumped full of some kind of sedative, wouldn’t have felt a thing.’

      Weiss lifted his right hand, still holding the pencil, with his palm towards the glass. ‘Whoa! Hold up. How do you know about these crocodiles if you were unconscious at the time they were eating your buddy?’

      ‘Heard Cross’s men mouthing off about it on the plane, laughing their asses off about the jaws crunching, Carl screaming for mercy. Lucky for them I was all tied up to a chair, wrapped in a cargo net. If I could have moved I’d have ripped their heads off and shoved them up their butts.’

      ‘But you don’t have any proof that Carl is dead, right? I mean, you didn’t see a body?’

      ‘How could I see a body?’ Congo cried, his voice rising indignantly. ‘I was out cold; Carl was in the crocodile’s guts! Why do you wanna ask me a stupid question like that?’

      ‘Because of the Bannock Trust,’ said Weiss quietly. ‘As long as there is no proof that Carl Bannock is dead, and Hector Cross sure won’t produce any proof, because that would make him a murderer, then the trust will be obliged to keep paying Carl his share of company profits. And anyone who, hypothetically, had access to Carl’s bank accounts would therefore benefit from that money. So, let me ask you again, for the record: do you have any direct, personal proof that Carl Bannock is dead?’

      ‘No, sir,’ said Johnny emphatically. ‘All I heard was people talking, never saw nothing, ’cause of being sedated at the time. And, come to think of it, I was still kinda spacey from the drugs when I was in the airplane. Could have been imagining what I heard, maybe dreaming, something like that.’

      ‘I agree. Sedative drugs can certainly create an effect akin to intoxication. It’s entirely possible that you never actually heard any conversation like the one you initially reported. Now, you said Cross made two mistakes. What was the second one?’

      ‘He didn’t dump me out the back of the plane. All he had to do was open the ramp at the back of the plane, slide me down it and just watch me fall …’ Johnny Congo whistled like the sound of a dropping weight. ‘… all the way down, twenty-five thousand feet till – bam!’ He slammed a sledgehammer fist into his palm.

      ‘You would’ve made a helluva crater,’ Weiss observed drily.

      ‘Yeah, I would that.’ Congo laughed and nodded his great bald head. ‘And if it’d been Cross in that chair and me lookin’ at him, I’ve have tossed him outta there like a human Frisbee. Wouldn’t think twice about it. He wanted to do it, too. Woulda done, weren’t for that dumbass bitch of his shooting her mouth off.’

      Weiss looked back down at his notepad, frowning as he leafed back to what he’d written on an earlier page. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you said she was deceased.’

      ‘I said I had his wife killed, don’t be shy about it. But this was a different bitch, the one he started up with after the wife was dead. She’s an attorney, jus’ like you. Anyway, Cross called her Jo. This bitch started up whining at Cross about how he shouldn’t have killed Carl. How he’d gone far beyond the law of America … yeah, “the law that I practise and hold dear”, that’s what she called it. And what it came right down to was if Cross offed me too, same as he’d done Carl, he wasn’t getting no more of her sweet pussy ever again.’ Congo shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dunno why Cross let her whip him like that. I wouldna took it, some stupid slut running off her mouth, lecturing me about right and wrong. I’d have told her, “Your pussy belongs to me, bitch.” Teach her a lesson so she don’t make the same mistake twice, you know what I’m saying?’

      ‘I get the picture, yeah,’ said Weiss. ‘But do you? Let me paint it for you, just in case. When you broke out of the Walls Unit—’

      Congo nodded. ‘Long time ago, now.’

      ‘Yes it was, but the law doesn’t care about that, because when you broke out, you were two weeks away from your execution date. You’d been found guilty of multiple homicides, not to mention all the ones carried out at your command during the period of your incarceration. You’d exhausted every possible avenue of appeal. They were going to strap you to a gurney, stick a needle in your arm and just watch until you died. And here’s your problem, Johnny. That’s what’s going to happen now. You were a fugitive. You were reapprehended. Now you’re right back where you were, the day you climbed into a laundry sack, got thrown in the back of a truck and drove right out through the main gates and on to the Interstate.’

      If Weiss had been trying to impress Congo with the gravity of his situation, he failed. The big man’s face twisted into a ghastly, wounded parody of a smile. ‘Man, that was a sweet operation, though, wasn’t it?’ he said.

      Weiss kept his expression impassive. ‘I’m an officer of the law, Johnny, I can’t congratulate you on what was obviously a criminal activity. But, yes, speaking objectively I can see that both the planning and the execution of the escape were carried out to a high standard of efficiency.’

      ‘Right. So how efficient you gonna be for me now?’

      Shelby Weiss was wearing a $5,000 pair of hand-tooled Black Cabaret Deluxe boots from Tres Outlaws in El Paso. His suit came from Gieves and Hawkes at No. 1 Savile Row, London. His shirts were made for him in Rome. He ran his hand down the lapel of his jacket and said quietly, ‘I didn’t get to be dressed this way by being bad at my job. I’ll tell you what I’m going to attempt – the impossible. I’ll call in every favour I’m owed, use every connection I possess, have my smartest associates go through every case they can think of with a fine-toothed comb, see if I can find some grounds for an appeal. I’ll work my ass off, right up to the very last second. But I like to be totally honest with my clients, which is why I’ve got to tell you, I don’t hold out much hope.’

      ‘Huh,’ Congo grunted. ‘All right, I’m on your wavelength …’ He stood up straight, sighed and lifted his chained wrists so he could scratch the back of his neck. Then he spoke calmly, dropping the tough-guy, gangster attitude, almost as if he was talking to himself as much as Weiss. ‘All my life I’ve had people look at me and I know they’re thinking: He’s just a big, dumb nigger. The amount of times I’ve been called a gorilla – sometimes, they even think it’s a compliment. Like in High School, playing left tackle for the Nacogdoches Golden Dragons, Coach Freeney, he would say, “You played like a rampaging gorilla today, Congo,” meaning I’d busted up the sons of bitches in the other team’s defence, so some pretty-boy cracker quarterback could make his fancy throws and get all the cheerleaders wet. And I’d say, “Thank you, Coach,” practically calling him “Massa”.’

      Now Congo’s intensity started building up again. ‘But inside, I knew I wasn’t dumb. Inside I knew I was better than them. And inside, right now, I understand exactly where I stand. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to contact a kid I used to know, D’Shonn Brown.’

      Weiss looked surprised: ‘What, the D’Shonn Brown?’

      ‘What you mean? Only one guy I’ve ever heard of by that name.’

      ‘Just that D’Shonn Brown is kind of a prodigy. A kid from the projects, not even thirty yet and he’s already on his way to his first billion. Good-looking as hell, got a great story, all the pretty ladies lining up outside his bedroom. That’s some friend you got there.’

      ‘Well, tell the truth, it’s been a while since I saw him, so I ain’t fully up to date with his situation, but he’ll know exactly who I am. Tell him the date they’re taking me up to Huntsville for the execution. Then say I’d really like to see him, you know, maybe for a visit or something, before they put me on that gurney and give me the needle. Me and his brother Aleutian were real tight. Loot got killed in London, England, and it was Cross that done it. So we got that personal issue in common, losing a loved one to the same