I wrote this long before I had any access to anyone who has actually been in South Africa. But any differences between the vague descriptions and the real thing can be blamed on the divergent timeline. But my effort to tie into real history throws another wrench into any attempt to adjust the events closer to modern times. There was only a narrow window of time between Mandela’s release and things really going to shit.
The fellow named Jeff is an oblique reference to a real person, and the third of three people I know who lived there at the time. We unfortunately lost him in 2013. (That long ago!)
I also own an M-43 Firestar. I had to fudge a little with that Prototype line since it was actually introduced a year after this takes place.
The female S.A.B.R.E. agent actually makes an appearance in Dr. Mauser and the Guns of Saint Mary’s, which was a short originally intended for the Malta anthologies published by Raconteur Press.
There’s also a slight foreshadowing of an ability Paul ended up with as an after-effect of the Tranh Event, and it’s not the dual memory thing....
Chapter 2: Run!
Johannesburg, South Africa, April 1992
Paul Mauser ducked just in time as the bullet embedded itself in the masonry wall of the alley, right where his temple had been a moment earlier. The flying shards of brick and mortar pelted him to far less lethal effect. In any other narrative, Paul might have taken a moment to wonder how things had gone so horribly wrong, but not getting killed took precedence. What he really needed was a gun of his own so that he could defend himself. In fact, he had been on his way to meet with a man who could provide him with one when this latest attempt on his life started. He was almost there. Perhaps he could still make it.
There was a space between two buildings he could scramble through, and a few oil drums stacked conveniently next to it. Just as he made his break, another shot rang out, and almost as if in slow motion, Paul could swear he saw the bullet graze past his left ear, strike the barrel obliquely, and ricochet in front of his face. Almost getting hit twice with the same bullet was more than enough. He reached up and grabbed to top of the barrel and pulled it in behind him as he ducked into the crevice. It jammed between the buildings quite satisfyingly as he made his escape.
It wouldn't be much of an escape. Surely the hired thugs after him knew the area better than he did, and could rejoin the chase in a moment, but the moment was his, and he had to make the most of it. Glancing left and right, he spotted where the major road should be and ran for it, and by sheer chance, the restaurant he was looking for was half a block away. He quickly made for the door and slipped inside. If he was lucky, the crowded public venue would discourage his pursuers. Taking a second to catch his breath, he pushed through the second set of doors.
The restaurant was empty.
The place was rather dim, even though it was noon outside. The layout was much like a diner, only without the windows. There were booths along the front wall, and a bar directly across from the entrance, but instead of bright chrome and Formica, the wooden furnishings were all heavily slathered with a deep red lacquer, almost black with age. "At least the booths have high backs," Paul thought, "so if they followed me here, they might not see me." He still wasn't sure who "they" were, but there were several strong possibilities. He'd only been conducting his work here for a year or so, but apparently he'd made some powerful enemies. He never thought that they'd try to kill him though.
A "psst!" from one of the corner booths turned him around, and Paul saw an older man in a Panama hat and a blue plaid shirt beckoning him. He seemed to be the only other person there. Paul slid into the booth opposite the man.
"So, you're the young fellow who's been stirring up all this trouble. Nice to finally meet you," the man said with a slight Irish accent. He extended his hand, and Paul took it. It was a firm grip, and steady.
"Paul Mauser. Pleased to meet you."
"Doctor Paul Mauser, you mean. You fought hard for that title. You should use it. It's important in this business."
"How did you know that?"
"I make it my business to learn about my potential clientele. You've been on my radar for a while now. Frankly, I'm surprised it's been this long before they tried to kill you."
"What?"
"You didn't think you could just show up and threaten the DeWines cartel without some repercussions, did you? Actually, it kind of tickles me that you have those bastards all stirred up, but I'm curious, what exactly have you been doing?"
"Purifying diamonds. My machine is able to target non-carbon substances in diamonds and essentially blow them out of the matrix. I really just discovered it by accident, I was trying to use an industrial grade diamond as a focusing element in my maser, and the more I experimented, the more efficient it became, until I took a look at it and realized it was perfectly clear. I figured I could sell the service here, it would be worth a lot of money and I could fund my research."
"You do realize that the reason diamonds are so expensive is the rarity of gem grade stones. If you flooded the market with quality stones, it would depress the prices. The cartels have been enforcing artificial scarcity for over a century."
"I did some research, that's why I approached one of the smaller syndicates, I figured they would want to pick up some of the market share."
"That's bad enough, but you made it worse, didn't you?"
Paul looked down at the table. "Yeah, it was probably stupid to try to sell the DeWines the technology to detect enhanced diamonds. Now everyone is pissed at me. But the syndicate wasn’t selling the diamonds I'd enhanced fast enough, they were just sitting on them. I figured if there was a danger to their future marketability, they'd sell them off faster."
"Then you don't know...."
"Don't know what?"
"Son, you've got S.A.B.R.E. out there looking for you."
Paul very briefly wondered at how it was possible to say a word and yet make it clear it was an acronym, but that was instantly replaced with a bigger concern. "Who?"
The Irish arms dealer was stunned. "Have you been living under a rock your whole life? You're an American. Surely you've heard of P.A.T.R.I.O.T. These guys are worse."
Paul furrowed his brows. He was starting to get a headache, one of those he hadn't had for nearly four years. Surely he should know about these things. He clutched the edge of the table as conflicts in his memory fought to resolve themselves. He did know something about these organizations. It was vague, like the memory of a dream, but it was becoming more clear, a piece at a time, until suddenly it all clicked as if he'd known it all along, and then he got very worried.
"I... I guess I wasn't really conscious of it."
"Right now they've got you tagged as a Rogue Physicist. They want to put an end to you before you become a full blown Mad."
"Mad? As in Mad Scientist? That's absurd. I'm just an Electrical Engineer trying to make his way in spite of that one big black mark on my resume."
"An engineer who has made a discovery that could collapse world markets and bring economic ruin. And now the so called 'Forces of Justice' want to put a stop to it."
"I take it you don't approve."
"I'm an international arms dealer, of course I don't approve. I make it my business to supply Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses, and various and sundry 'Evil' organizations so they can stand a chance against these abominable extra-governmental vigilante armies."
Paul was really beginning to feel out of his depth. "So, uh, why me? I'm just after one gun to defend myself. That's gotta be small potatoes to you."
"Anyone who shows up in a Rolls Royce showroom is treated as well as if he were about to buy one, even if it obviously isn't within his means, because one day he may indeed be a Rolls Royce customer, and so he deserves that respect. I think it's a wonderful principle, and I have an eye for these things. In the near future, I can see that you're going to be a great customer. Or you're going to be dead. In either case..." he said, opening up a briefcase he had beside him in the booth and pulling out a fabric wrapped bundle, "... the first one is on the house."
The man unfolded the cloth to reveal a small semi-automatic pistol. It had a silvery finish, shiny in some areas, and matte like ground glass in others. The grips were black rubber. He picked it up, dropped the magazine and cycled the action, a chambered round fell to the table, then he put it back down and slid the cloth towards Paul.
"That's a Star M-43 Firestar. It's next year's model, but they sent me a prototype to see if I'd be interested. I've done a little work on it," the gun dealer said. Paul picked up the compact pistol. It was surprisingly heavy. "That's single action, so you'll have to cock it for the first shot, or keep it cocked and locked, which would be my recommendation for the moment. It's simple and reliable, and easier to conceal than a full size nine millimeter. I have three seven round magazines for you, plus the round in the chamber. Nothing more pointless than an unloaded gun, I say." He put the rest of the box of 9mm cartridges on the table. "That should be more than enough to get you out of here." Paul shoved the box of ammo and two of the magazines into the pocket of his sports jacket. He picked up the third magazine and the single bullet, but waited to reload the gun. Somehow that felt rude. "You know how to handle that, right?"
Paul had some vague memory about a firearms handling class in third grade, which seemed absurd. It must have been the Boy Scouts, although he didn't remember being a Boy Scout ever. But he did remember being taught the basics of gun handling somewhere along the line. He muttered, "Of course, I'm an American, right?" That elicited a laugh.
Just then an electronic beep came out of the briefcase, and the Irishman pulled a radiophone the size of a brick out and answered it. It was the first time Paul had actually seen a cellular phone in person, even though they'd been around for nearly a decade.
The call was short. "You need to go. Now," the man said, stuffing the phone and the cloth into his case. "They have men out front. Fortunately, I have men out back. Let that be a lesson, always have a secure escape route."
"Right," said Paul, loading the gun.
"Get out of South Africa as fast as you can. And if you do make it out of here alive, I have a compound in Cairo. Look me up." The man handed him a business card with an address written across the back. "Good luck."
"Thanks." Paul glanced at the card before putting it away, and had to smile. It simply read "Professor Gunn, Armaments and Munitions" and a number that presumably went to the portable phone. He loved a good pun, even, it appeared, when his life was in danger.
---
"Get out of South Africa as fast as you can," the man said. Easier said than done. Transportation took money. Discreet transportation took even more. And the security situation was particularly bad. Nelson Mandela had been released from prison two years ago, and negotiations between his party and the ruling class had been deteriorating. Everyone was expecting violence to break out. The problem was that most of the ready cash he had was in his apartment, which had clearly been compromised, judging by the broken windows and bullet holes in the façade centered around the third floor he occupied. Talk about extreme prejudice!
He walked as casually as he could around the block, looking for anyone watching his place, but if there were, they were well-hidden. Entering from the back alley, he made his way upstairs. The door had been kicked open. Holding the small pistol at the ready, he carefully stepped inside.
The room looked like a grenade had gone off in it. That was not a metaphor. There was shrapnel embedded in every square foot of wall or ceiling that hadn't been ruptured by the blast. The smell of the explosives hung heavy in the air. Clearly grenades had been launched into the windows from the street. Then it had been ransacked more along the lines of the metaphor.
The next room wasn't much better. An ugly painting of giraffes lay on the floor, torn from the hinges that held it over the wall safe. The safe door hung open, expertly picked. He idly wished he could have gotten the combination from the man who picked, it, because it had been lost long before he rented the place. If anything had been left in it by the previous occupant, it was gone.
The wreckage was beginning to get depressing. He never understood the necessity of slicing up pillows and mattresses when searching a place. It's not like he'd be sewing up a mattress over and over again as he hid things in it. Books had been knocked off all the shelves and trampled under booted feet, which was criminal to him. Whoever these S.A.B.R.E. assholes were, he was developing a deep and burning hatred of them. They had been thorough, even taking the lid off the toilet tank, cracking it as they tossed it aside. But everything they searched, they searched from a standing position. Paul laid on the floor and wriggled under the sink, reaching up into the cavity behind the bowl where the faucets were, and pulled out a heavy white cloth bag the size of his fist. They weren't necessarily the largest or finest diamonds, but they had shown the most promise when it came to his research, so he had told his sponsors they had "Failed" enhancement and shattered. There were probably several million dollars worth in the bag.
He gripped the bag. Originally he had twinges of guilt as he culled what he wanted from the stream of crap stones he'd turned into Grade-A gems for them, but the more he dealt with the whole industry, the less it bothered him. They said he'd get paid when they sold the gems, but then sat on them, or if they sold them, he had no way to track it. A good number had been so polluted that purifying them resulted in them shattering into piles of worthless powder, so "stealing" them had been been trivial. And now he felt completely justified.
Paul made his way to the kitchen. As one would expect, every drawer had been yanked out and dumped on the floor. Paul knelt down and picked at the toekick under the sink cabinet, and pulling that open, revealed the modest stacks of currency he'd been able to accumulate. He stuffed those in his jacket as well.
Just then, he heard voices - a man and a woman, speaking what was probably Italian. Paul drew his gun again, and hid against the kitchen doorway. He hazarded a quick peek around the corner, and they didn't spot him, as they were watching their steps while they picked their way through the wreckage of the living room. The man was wearing black combat fatigues and a beret. A large semi-auto pistol was in his hand. He'd been holding it in a ready position when he entered, but he was relaxing his guard. The woman immediately registered as beautiful. Flowing black hair cascaded over the shoulders of her leather catsuit, an Uzi carbine with the stock collapsed cradled in her hands.
When did my life turn into a B-grade spy movie? Paul sighed, mentally. He had to make his move while he still had the element of surprise. He stepped out into the doorway and swept the gun across the agents, firing as fast as he could. He wasn't trying for marksmanship, but at that range he was sure he could hit them, he just wanted to do it before they could shoot back. The woman let out a scream as a bullet tore through her inner thigh and she fell to the floor. Her companion merely let out a thud.
Paul wasted no time in running over to them. In that moment, the woman had a dilemma, take up her gun and try to shoot him, or keep her hands clamped tightly over her wounded femoral artery. Paul solved that problem for her by tossing her gun away. Her companion had taken a round to the throat that had severed his spinal column on the way out, and his body armor had absorbed several more. Paul held the gun on her, unsure of what to do. She looked up at him with smoldering hatred and defiance in her dark eyes, but she was helpless to act - if she took the pressure off her leg she would bleed out in a minute. He could not bring himself to shoot her in that state. Maybe someday he would be ruthless enough to kill her the way she wanted to do him, but today was not that day.
Keeping the gun trained on her, Paul stepped back into the kitchen, and from the pile of drawer contents, picked up a roll of duct tape. He got the end of the tape started, walked up to her and dropped it in her lap. "Sorry," he said, "That's the best I can do for you."
She looked down at the tape and back up at him. "Sei un Mostro," she said. You are a Monster.
"I suppose so," he muttered as he dashed from the apartment.
---
He was halfway to the Lesotho border in the agent's stolen Range Rover when the shaking started. He had been running on nothing but adrenaline since the firebomb went off in his lab this morning. If he hadn't been delayed by taking home the previous night's assignation, his day might have ended right then. It almost had anyway as the men surrounding the place opened fire, rendering the late-model Mercedes he'd been borrowing worthless scrap. He had no idea who they were, but he had a good idea what they were after, and managed to escape on foot while they were having too much fun destroying the car.
He did find a police officer at one point, who frustratingly refused to help him. It wasn't that he didn't believe his story, but was disinclined to get involved. His statement about it being a problem he'd brought on himself was much less incomprehensible now that he knew what was going on.
He had found a payphone and made some calls, but the people he'd thought were his friends wouldn't help him either, except Jeff, a British civil engineer he'd met in a bar a month or two ago, who had told him where he might be able to get a gun on short notice. At the time he was grateful, but he would save being suspicious of him until later.
The point being, he'd been running and fighting for his life for the past five hours without having eaten in the last eighteen, nor, to put it politely, having gotten much sleep, and his body wouldn't put up with much more. He was crashing, figuratively, and if he didn't want to crash literally, he had to pull over. Fortunately a good spot to park presented itself in the wide-open farming district, and his brain shut down almost as fast as the engine.
The nightmare was not long in following, as the traumatic events of the day twisted about in his subconscious. Every moment he had cheated death played out the opposite way. He felt hot blood running down his face and chest as he was killed again and again. But his mind saved the worst torture for last, as he stood over the beautiful female agent and shot her in the head, to no effect as her lifeless body, animated purely by hate, raised the Uzi and pumped round after round into him, pap, pap, pap!
Tap, tap, tap! Paul awoke with a start. He was not being shot, someone was tapping on the window of the Rover. Actually, that person was now stepping back from the Rover with his hands raised. As he collected his wits and reoriented himself, Paul suddenly realized the gun was in his hand, and pointed at the farmer who had found him passed out at the wheel. Sweat was pouring down his face and his shirt was soaked. Even though it was South Africa's fall, it was still a moderate, sunny afternoon. With the windows rolled up and no shade, the Rover was an oven. He quickly lowered the gun, then rolled down the window partway.
"Sorry, sorry! You just startled me," Paul apologized, thankful he hadn't subconsciously shot the man. One, or possibly two, was quite enough for his first day as a killer.
"You were screaming," the farmer said in unpracticed English, "You okay? I go now, okay?" He kept backing up to the beat-up Toyota pickup parked on the opposite shoulder. Then he got in and floored it getting away, leaving a huge cloud of dust.
"Shit," he muttered. He had gotten maybe twenty minutes of "rest" - just enough that he could keep his eyes uncrossed. He decided to climb out of the truck and stretch his legs a little, then it occurred to him to check out the back and see what kind of resources he had. The arsenal was frankly, a little disturbing. A couple of M-16's, one with a grenade launcher, were racked on the side of the cargo area, along with a bi-pod equipped sniper rifle with an enormous scope, and in a box across the bed, at least two collapsible rocket launchers. Paul realized that if he got caught with this, driving a stolen vehicle was the least of his worries.
There were duffel bags in the back, which yielded two dress uniforms that were way too big, or way too feminine, respectively, for him to wear. There was a first aid kit, which thankfully he was not in need of, and pushed way in the back, or rather front, was a cardboard box containing some military rations. Jackpot!
Paul took out his Swiss Army knife ("Every gentleman should have a pocketknife," his father often said) and carefully sliced off the corner of a plastic bag of water, then sucked down nearly half of it before turning his attention to the rations. He had no intention of standing there for the time it would take to mix and eat the Beef Stroganoff, but there were other snack items in the package he could eat immediately.
Thus fortified, he climbed back into the driver's seat and prepared to hit the road. But before he started, he checked his gun. He pulled the magazine out and realized there was only one round left in it, along with the one in the chamber. More frighteningly, he realized he hadn't set the safety back on since the gunfight in his apartment, a failure that disturbed him deeply considering what had just happened. He fished a fresh magazine out of his jacket pocket and put it in the gun, resolving to refill the one he removed later, and made sure to set the safety before setting it into the console. Sometime soon he would need to get a proper holster.
Several hours later he crossed the border. Apparently the S.A.B.R.E. insignia on the door carried significant clout, because the border guards waved him through without a second glance.
Lesotho had been a deliberate choice. Botswana to the north would be much more obvious, a far more democratic and upstanding nation, and very sparsely populated, it would be the first place anyone tracking him would look. Lesotho was a historical oddity, a donut hole in the middle of South Africa, a small nation wholly surrounded by it. Certainly the wrong direction to run if you wanted to get out, at least by conventional means. Fortunately he already had visas for a number of African nations thanks to his erstwhile patrons, so paperwork wasn't an issue, all he really needed was a plane and a bush pilot who could sneak by. One or two jumps and he could be anywhere in the world. But at the moment, Cairo seemed as good a destination as any.
---
Hours later, slumped across the back seats of a Beech Baron flying low over Swaziland, Paul finally had a moment to think about how it all went so horribly wrong.
It was easy to blame Esther Woo. Easy, because it actually was her fault. In spite of her fiancee and the father of her child accidentally erasing himself from recent history, she had pressed on with her goals, while Paul had been disoriented enough that he didn't realize that she had "borrowed" his files - the incident with the disk had been forgotten, only to rear its ugly head when he went to make his final dissertation. Esther had gone on to finish her research well ahead of him, and received her degree shortly before her delivery, and left. When Paul made his presentation to the committee, he was accused of plagiarizing Esther's work. She had used his charge pump circuits for her orbital power supply design, and by virtue of being a woman, a minority, a single mother to be, and first, there was no way the committee would accept his version of events over hers. It took six months of fighting, and threats of lawsuits before he was finally able to convince them that his own work was his. The fact that his design was actually more advanced than the one Esther had stolen wasn't immediately obvious, so it took quite a bit of convincing to get anyone to listen to him pointing out the differences.
In the end, he was grudgingly granted his degree, but the accusation had stained his academic record, and cost him valuable time. The previous offers he'd had from the major research labs dried up, the positions suddenly filled or the hiring windows prematurely closed. He had his degree, but his future was gone.
Somewhere along the line it occurred to him that he should continue his research on his own. If he could demonstrate the superiority of his maser, they would have to acknowledge his brilliance.
Paul chuckled, in retrospect, that line of reasoning certainly did sound like a burgeoning Mad Scientist.
Somewhat sequestered on the third floor of a South Philly rowhouse a friend of his owned, Paul struggled to make something of his invention. The discovery of diamond purification was an unexpected side effect of trying to find a substance durable enough to deal with the increasing power of the microwave laser, the heat it produced would burn through the best high-chromium reflectors he could get his hands on. Then he hit upon the idea of using the crystalline matrix of a stone to control the beam. Quartz blew up. Salt crystals held out surprisingly longer, as much as half a second. A tiny industrial diamond on the end of a lathe bit, combined with adjusting the frequencies and polarization of the microwaves produced an order of magnitude increase in the device's efficiency. And in the process, anything not part of a perfectly aligned carbon crystal effectively went poof. Atoms of contaminants were knocked free like neutrons in an atomic reaction.
That led him to South Africa, and now to his fleeing for his life from some sort of international vigilante justice organization out for his head.
This would take some time to sort out. Fortunately, it was still a long plane ride to Madagascar, and getting a berth on a freighter heading up the coast would give him even more time to think. And once he got to Cairo, he could finally get some answers.