1 Chapter 1: Night of long knives

During the first summer season, on a Tuesday night of 18th November 2015, the weather was cold and cheerless, as a grave. Heavy rain was teeming down and made the atmosphere suffocating. It started raining at half past eight in the evening, and continued without a break for the next three hours. Now the light had changed in all of a sudden, big clouds were stretching over the sky, darkening the Harare city and it had all quite quickly became different.

The forecaster had said that these clouds were moving down over the country from the Eastern side, and some moderate falls of light drizzle were expected to reach the Mashonaland West Province by early morning. In addition, the weather became perceptibly colder than the previous day.

In of sudden, a maroon Citroen came up faster drifting out of the highway and screeched at a neck- breaking speed, in front of the Chinese private pub, located in Semi Levy village, Borrowdale. Kirsty drive might just as well have been uninhabited, and the rain was pouring heavily down upon it, and forced everyone to remain in-doors. Heavy rain was bucketing into the street like a sinking sussex. Up in the sky, one could see a dazzling flash of lightening, followed by weird shrills of thunder. Suddenly, a violent wind prevailed sweeping the streets and tossing papers on its tail. The Russian flags at the Embassy danced madly, like tattered rags.

The man behind the steering wheel was not right. He was fierce and scary, albeit he looked more like a clergyman, than he did a heartless man. He had a dark caftan and a hoodie on head. The caftan accentuated heavy dark boots on his feet.

Opening the door of his car, he stepped down and his eyes danced in amusement, like Christopher Columbus when he first stepped on the land of America. Quickly, he slammed close the door and locked it, aware of the bad weather, and then he rushed inside avoiding the sight of its customers. He felt certain they were watching him, but he did not have interest to face their looks. Keeping his gaze straight ahead, he moved to the bar. The bartender was a young man. He was a Chinese, round faced, flat nose and long hair combed backwards. He had plumpy cheeks, short hands but strong. He was wearing gently to himself. He appeared to have reached a decision and weighed its wisdom beneath the wide shade of his bush hat.

Glancing at the man in dark caftan, the bartender thought. He is entirely an animal.

He jolted to a halt, his breath cut off. Standing rooted, heart beat hammering at his chest, it was a nightmare from what he was seeing. He looked round with a sudden dread. There were five men drinking, three along the bar and two in the booth. He cursed himself for having failed to look at the faces when they had entered, and now there was no way of knowing who were they. Abruptly, the bartender walked to the nearest booth and picked up empties clumsily on the table, his gaze flicked nervously at the man in a caftan. The man in a caftan stood up on his feet, all in one astonished movement and flagged the bartender to serve him. He tipped his hood down over his eyes, folded his arms across the chest, leant his weight against the bar and appeared dozed away in the livid shade. He was dreaming of a hand reaching down out of heaven holding his fifty percent share.

"How are you?" The bartender asked his heart pounding alarmingly.

Instead of responding to the greetings, the clergyman only told the bartender what he wanted.

"Whisky." The man opened his mouth, but did not take off the hood.

He looked down at his boots and for the first time noticed they were dirty. He rubbed them alternately against the bottom of his caftan, to shine them a little.

The bartender brought his whisky and he paid for it, and then he walked to the other end and seated himself on the glass-chair. He was being eyed objectively by the man behind the counter. He then felt the hard stubble on his face and shook his head, and only then did remember the whisky in-front of him again. He poured it deliberately in the glass and waited while the froth subsided. A sound from the bar startled him and he snatched up the glass and emptied it in one long gulp.

Everyone around the place eyed him objectively. A burst of radio from the bar expressed something more than banality. And that was something totally unusual. A night by itself had changed and became somehow magical, full of meaning and presence of death.

Now the man sneaked a peek at the three men drinking by the bar. A Chinese in the jungle hat, and other two men he had not seen before. To his right on the booths were two English- man sat apart and batted stunted conversations at each other across the table tops. The bartender sat by himself in the bar.

The room was very large. Along one side was a glass wall. Perhaps, this place was there for drinkers who suddenly got carried away. It looked as if the owners of the premises were Chinese, due the decorations inside. To one side was a raised platform with an upright piano, chairs and music stands, and unattended microphones perched at the very edge. It was a wide and airy place. A giant fan was turning idly overhead with a mechanical sibilance, merely providing a good atmosphere. The chairs along the bar were made of wood. Again, the man in a caftan walked to the bar and flagged the bartender.

"How can I help you?" The bartender asked solicitously.

The man leaned over the bar and groaned frightfully. " Cheng Zing aloe." He forced a smile at his face.

The bartender shrugged. "Who the hell are you, asking me about Cheng?".

Unexpectedly, the bartender saw a barrel of a silenced automatic pistol pointing at his belly and involuntarily, he felt the might hands of the clergyman on his throat, smashing the wind pipe. The man could see the Chinese hissing out the last breath and then suffocating, then a corpse.

"You must've manners, son." He whispered and released a stiff body down to the floor.

Suddenly, the trouble began. Three men along the counter intervened, two of them stepped forward and rushed to the man in a caftan, swung their feet and hammered into the man's abdomen. The man reeled back, like a drunken man and groaned in great pain. He did not fall down, and he was strong. Involuntarily, one of these Chinese stepped forward throwing out a hand quickly, and connected it with the man's chest. The clergyman only managed to step aside, then slammed the man's shoulder blade with his rigid hands, crashed the neck, and he swung his foot and hammered across the belly, underneath a right hand, breaking the ribs and sent him spinning over the counter and died.

Another Chinese came throwing out a great combination of Ikido punches and kicks, but the clergyman strong arms blocked across his face and suddenly hit the Chinese mercilessly in the diaphragm with his strong foot, sending him flying away in agony. The clergyman had been struck with a glass chair from behind on the head and it was broken and showered. He was dazed by its impact, and fell down in great pain. He gasped with pain. He got to his knees, shook his head and stood upright. He had gained his consciousness. From the corner of his right eye, he saw another man picking a chair, swung it round and through it toward him. But eventually, he hammered the chair with a mighty push kick and it changed its appointed destination, sending it in the opposite direction toward the glass wall, flying away.

The clergyman withdrew his lethal weapon- a razor thin, double edged hunters' knife from the waist scabbard inside the caftan. He swung it round and went on tearing all of them, slicing rib-cartilage, and exposing intestines outside the bellies. The walls and the tops of the tables, became red, with a plunge pool of blood and it was the evidence of murder.

Shoving his lethal weapon into its scabbard, he walked toward the door written EXIT. It was mounted at the rear of the pub near the rest rooms. He kicked open the door with his heavy mighty push kick and went into the dim-lit hallway. It was silent. Nobody was moving there, except himself. He passed through the arch-door way heading to the opposite rooms. There was a room painted white at the door post. He heard voices of people speaking and laughing. The light from the room shone through the glass door, unto the door step. He glanced at his wrist watch and it was exactly mid-night. He pushed open the door. Five Chinese brothers were sitting in front of him, on the chairs round the table. Cheng was there. The clergyman took off a hoodie and stood in front of them.

Cheng clapped his hands with satisfaction. "Well, well, well. What a surprise of seeing you alive? I thought you were dead, buddy? Five months ago."

"So you're a traitor? You betrayed me. For what reasons?" The clergyman groaned, his lips trembling with anger.

"Take it easy. Be still." Cheng stood up, pushed his chair back and moved to the open, his gaze looking at him studiously.

He took a cigarette and lit it. " Do you remember the early morning of 2nd July that operation kill rebels, had been launched against the Tutsie tribe of Zaire to the west of Kinshasa......"

To the clergyman, it was hard and a bitter memory, even now, but he allowed his thoughts full reign. He could do so now. Yes, and it was important that he should do so.

On that morning in 1997, at 04:00 hours, the guns of the rebellions had spat and belched their shells into the enemy's lines, and the battle raged furiously. The noise of the battle was deafening as shrapnel soared and whistled and plunged and dealt its death amidst the jungle in that region. Men shouted and pleaded and ran and died. Some blessedly swiftly in an instantaneous annihilation other lingeringly as they lay mortally wounded on the bloody sand. Yes, others burnt to ashes in the sugarcane plantation.

The next thing, the clergyman saw was the face of Zhen Woo Wren a leader of the rebellions, whom his fellow rebels had not been able to protect him that terrible day. To Zhen Woo Wren, it had always seemed strange that the campaign was considered by war historians to be such a miraculous triumph of strategic planning, since from his brief, but not unheroic participation in that battle, he could remember only the blinding confusions around him, during the moment he was captured. But already the focus had changed. Zhen Woo Wren got arrested. Under a harsh, brief interrogation, Zhen Woo Wren was killed mercilessly in Kinshasa city, being pulled by an army truck on the streets. He was picked up soon after this, and the next thing the clergyman could remember was throwing him in the pool of crocodiles, where he suddenly disappeared in two minutes.

"Yes, I remember that operation."

"And why did you kill my brother, Zhen?"

"It was my duty to kill rebells!" His teeth were gnashing, like of tortured teeth in hell.

"I was assigned to assassinate you by the China Brothers Syndicate, and it was upon our dead brother, who had been less sturdy, more vulnerable, than the formidable. And I found it not right to kill an innocent person like you. That is why I wanted to sent you to the prison that you would perish there and pay back the cost of killing Zhen. I conned you into the jungle to be killed with the wardens, but you survived. But now I'm left with no option but to kill you myself." He signaled a strange burst of a bomb.

In abrupt, the clergyman sparked the flame of the trouble, as he jumped over the nearby table, drew his razor- thin hunters' knife. He swung it by the handle, fainted to make these Chinese duck, and slung it sideways with all his strength. Cheng had bobbed upright again, the knife, a lucky shot- caught him glancing on the eye and going backwards, he tripped and fell. His right eye had gone, a hole formed in the eye and dark stains erupted.

"Kill him- mmm!" He cried out loud in agony and disappeared around the curved-wall.

As the clergyman belted across to the open toward Cheng, the four Chinese had already took their positions, guns drawn, firing them toward him. He dived to the nearby table, which was on the other end of the room and ducked behind it. The was a long burst of these guns. Shuttering fusillade of bullets ripped into the wood-table. The glasses and portraits on the walls showered. He flinched back and ducked. The guns were exploding near his ear. Pictures of circus performers with these things rushed through his mind.

Suddenly, he drew the weapon of his own from his hip holster. He got to his knees and started firing back. The automatic pistol tore the abdomen of these Chinese, eyes punctured, holes formed in the foreheads, and already they were dead. Cheng had already gone away.

The victory was his, he had defeated his enemies, but there was still one thing he needed. He wanted his fifty- percent share, and without it, he was going to hunt Cheng down. From the corner of his eye, the priest saw a man lying down in the pool of blood, twitching his legs. He rushed to him, knelt beside and asked for Cheng's place, but he did not clearly hear him, for the man was already a corpse.

The clergyman knew that the police would arrive soon. Quickly, he walked into the rest room and stood by the sink. Opening the faucet, he cupped water with his hands, splashed some to his face and cleaned the stains of blood. He looked at himself in the mirror and he felt quite pleased with himself really. As accurately as it could his mind retraced the stages of the night's events. The shading of blood, wise and foolish, and his own actions, carefully considered, and he knew well phrased. The pool of blood had been satisfactory to himself, and as he stood there making sure all of them were dead, a half smile played across his firm-good-humored lips. One he could think about was Cheng the traitor.

He checked his wrist watch and again the quite smile played about his mouth, when he heard police cars wailing sirens at a distance. He knew very well; it was coming for a man in a caftan. Quickly, he rushed outside, undressed the caftan, threw it under the hedges and left the place.