Blood Safari

45

I knew guys like Eric.

They came from the grey mass of the middle class, always bigger and stronger than the rest. At school they were trapped in the no man’s land between the in-groups of the brainy kids and the jocks. The only way out, the way to be noticed and respected, was through physical intimidation. These were the ingredients in the making of a bully.

Instinctively, they knew this strategy wouldn’t work in the adult world. Instead, they would join the police or the army, where a uniform would compensate. There they discovered the Power of the Gun and became addicted to it. But the salary, the working conditions, the lack of advancement through the ranks and the constant reminders that they were still middle class left them frustrated and dissatisfied. After four or five years they would seek out opportunities in the private sector, but they would never give up telling their stories – about how rough and ready they had been in the force. You had to know how fearless they were, how tough and strong, how many guys they had beaten up and how many they had shot.

They believed their own reputation, because in groups of five or six they could assault women, torture black gate guards and fling middle-aged conservationists into lion pens. They were afraid of nothing, hard men of violence.

But take away their guns and they are nothing.

I went to meet him on the road. Big sturdy guy. I hit him in the face. He dropped and got up again.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said, full of bravado. He lifted his fists, dropped his head and looked at me from under his eyebrows. He pecked with a right. I grabbed his fist, dragged him forward and smacked him across the face with the back of my hand.

He didn’t want to show he was humiliated. He danced away, a poor parody of light-footed courage.

He came at me again, more wary this time. Two, three lefts at my body. I let him hit, the blows weren’t debilitating. They gave him confidence. The next one would be a right, the aspiring knockout blow, the one he would swing from below his shoulder.

His balance wasn’t bad, he knew better than to telegraph with his eyes – somewhere in his youth were a few years of boxing. He struck and I let it pass left of my head and then I went away to another world, the other place. Where time stood still. Where everything disappeared, you heard nothing and saw just red-grey mist. And this thing in front of you that you lusted to destroy with all the powers within you.

I fetched the Jeep and dragged Kappies and Eric into the vehicle and dumped them off at the house. I tied each one to a bed with baling wire that I found in the back of the Prado, between more sophisticated equipment. There were radio receivers and unidentifiable electronic boxes with LED screens and switches, laptops, earphones, microphones and antennae, extension cords and tools. I wondered whether this was the stuff they used to listen in on the calls. One carton was labelled GPS Tracking.

I checked Kappies’ wound once I had tied him securely. He would live. He wouldn’t win the Comrades marathon, though. He stared at me wordlessly with frightened eyes.

Whether Eric would make it, I didn’t know. I really didn’t care.

Then I took off my bloodstained clothes and had a bath.

I took my sports bag and drove the Jeep to the forestry station, left it there and took the Nissan. Just after midnight, I drove to Nelspruit.

In the SouthMed Hospital car park I phoned Jeanette Louw first. She must have been asleep, but she disguised it well.

‘I got them,’ I said.

‘Got them?’

‘Four are dead. Two are in a bad way.’

‘Jesus, Lemmer.’

‘It’s not over yet, Jeanette. I have to go to the Cape tomorrow.’

‘What’s in the Cape?

‘I want the address of a Quintus Wernich, chairman of the board of Southern Cross Avionics. He lives in Stellenbosch.’ Jeanette Louw said, ‘Fuck.’

‘You know him?’

‘Jesus. He’s part of this?’

‘Jeanette, I haven’t got time now. I’ll tell you everything, but not now. You know Wernich.’

‘I met him when I made a presentation of our services to Southern Cross. After all that trouble the bastard said no thanks, they had their own people.’

‘Not any more, I don’t think. What else?’

‘I knew all about them before I talked to them, but that was months ago. Let me think … If I remember correctly, they made their name with new systems for the Mirage, the fighter plane. I still have the stuff here somewhere. I’ll take a look.’

‘Can you get Wernich’s address? And book a flight for me?’

‘I will.’ Then she asked sharply, ‘When did you last sleep?’

‘I can’t remember. Day before yesterday; something like that. I’m at the hospital. I’ll have a quick nap now.’

‘Good idea. Listen, you wanted to know about Stef Moller.’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me just get my notes. You must understand, what I found is mostly speculative. You won’t be able to prove it.’

‘I don’t want proof. He’s out of the picture, anyway.’

‘So, for what it’s worth, have you ever heard of Frama Inter-Trading?’

‘Never.’

‘I won’t bore you with details, but in the seventies and eighties the army was smuggling ivory and Frama was the front company. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of rands. In 1996 the Kumleben Commission investigated the whole business and their report said that there was possible corruption and self-enrichment on a grand scale. But as you can guess, no one wanted to point fingers. One of the names mentioned was a Stefanus Lodewikus Moller. He was Frama’s auditor. He was the one that moved the money around.’

I was too exhausted to digest all that.

‘Are you there?’ Jeanette asked.

‘I’m dumbstruck.’

‘Yes, Lemmer. This fucking country. But you go and sleep your sleep, I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, Jeanette.’

‘Before I forget,’ she said urgently.

‘What?’

‘You can’t take the Glock on the plane.’

‘Oh, yes. I hadn’t thought that far.’

‘Leave it with B. J. Fikter. I’ll get something for you at this end.’

I picked up my bag and went into the hospital. B. J. Fikter was on night shift. He looked fresh and alert and he took his hand off his firearm when he saw that it was me. The police constable was fast asleep opposite him.

‘Ah, how pretty you look, my dear,’ he said.

‘And I haven’t even put my make-up on yet. Any news?’

He shook his head.

‘The risk is considerably reduced. I wanted to let you know. Not completely eliminated, but I don’t imagine you’ll be bothered tonight.’

‘You got them.’

‘I did.’

‘Thanks for inviting your friends to the party.’

‘I know you’re not a party animal. You look so domestic’

‘Oh, the masks that we wear. What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m going to have a sleep on the VIP couch. I just want to …’I gestured at Emma’s room.

He said nothing, just grinned.

The black night nurse recognised me. She nodded. I could go in.

I opened the door and went over to her bed. She lay there just the same as ever. I looked at her and felt a great wearines corne over me. I sat down and stretched out my hand to rest on hers.

‘Emma, I found Jacobus.’

Her breathing was deep and peaceful.

‘He misses you terribly. He’s going to come here, maybe tomorrow. When you’re better, you can see him. So you have to get better.’

You can’t trust yourself when you haven’t slept for forty hours. Your head is a maelstrom, your senses betray you, and you live in a world where dreams and reality are indistinguishable.

So, when I imagined that Emma’s hand moved almost imperceptibly under mine, I knew that I was deluding myself.

Vincent ‘Pego’ Mashego took a course at the Mogale rehabilitation centre in the summer of 2003. One afternoon he was walking between the buildings and he saw a figure in the lammergeier’s cage that made his heart stand still.

The man was on his haunches scraping manure off the floor and Pego stared wordlessly. It was like a dream, unreal and incomprehensible.

The man looked up and he knew it was Jacobus le Roux.

Jacobus charged out, making the lammergeier flap her giant wings. They embraced fiercely, without speaking, seventeen years after they had parted ways in a nameless hamlet in Mozambique. Jacobus took him to his little house out of fear that someone would see them and that the evil would return to claim Pego, too.

They swapped stories. In 1986 Pego had stayed in Mozambique for six months and then went home to his people. Yes, there were white men who came asking for him, twice. But that was some months ago.

He had been frightened. He couldn’t tell the whole story to his family out of fear that someone would say the wrong thing somewhere. As far as they were concerned, there had just been some big trouble between him and the boere, trouble that necessitated that they should never know he had returned, trouble that dictated that he would not be Pego again, they would call him only Vincent, so he could begin a new life.

The boere hadn’t kept looking for him. Maybe they thought he wasn’t a danger to them. Who would believe a simple maPulana man’s stories about lights and cables in the game reserve, about people shooting at him and burning him?

Only late in 1987 did he get work in a private game reserve as a waiter. The owner soon spotted his knowledge of the veld and transferred him to assistant to the field guides.

In 1990 he married Venolia Lebyane and in 1995 he saw an advertisement put out by the Limpopo Parks Board. They wanted black people with Matric who aspired to become game wardens in the provincial game reserves. He didn’t have the schooling, but he went to see them in Polokwane anyway. He explained that his knowledge lay in the bush, not books. He didn’t have paper qualifications, but wouldn’t they give him a chance?

They had, because there were few applications. The people of Limpopo wanted work in the city, not the veld. So Vincent Mashego became a game ranger, and now he was the head of the Talamati Bushveld Camp in the Manyeleti Game Reserve alongside Kruger.

Then Jacobus told his story to Pego and the black man held him when he wept. He said he owed Jacobus his life. He would help.

Jacobus said there was nothing he could do.

There would be. Some time or other.

They had seen each other afterwards. From time to time Jacobus would travel to Manyeleti surreptitiously and sit beside a campfire with Pego. It was most like old times when they used to talk about the veld and animals. Nowadays they talked about the pressure on the environment that kept increasing, the threats, the white property developments, the black land claims, the poachers going after rhino horns and vulture heads, the greed across the spectrum of colour and race.

One more poisoning after all the others pushed Jacobus le Roux over the edge. He told me it felt as though twenty years of fear, frustration and death became too much for him in that instant. He stood among the carcasses in the veld and he couldn’t carry all those burdens any more. Those magnificent creatures that he had come to know so well at Mogale, those beautiful birds that had stretched out their great wings in the winds only hours before, became the symbol of his life’s futility. Inside him something broke at last. He fetched his rifle and followed the spoor to the sangoma’s hut. He found them there, the vultures and the blunt knives they used to cut up the carcasses, the little piles of money and the plastic bags and those four people. So he shot them. In his madness and rage and hatred.

Only three hours later, somewhere in the veld, had he come to his senses. He realised what he had done. He fled to Pego, who hid him and told him he would help, because his wife, Venolia, worked for the police at Hoedspruit. She would tell them if they were looking for Jacobus.

Venolia Mashego had been there in the office with Jack Phatudi when a woman phoned from Cape Town asking whether Jacobus le Roux might not be Cobie de Villiers. Pego knew it was the sister. He had found Emma’s number and phoned her because he wanted to repay his debt to Jacobus by saving his sister. But in the bush at Manyeleti the cell phone signal was weak and he didn’t know how much Emma heard.

Jacobus had been angry with him when he heard about it. So angry that he left in the night and went to Stef Moller. But after the death of Frank Wolhuter, Jacobus phoned Pego and said he had been wrong. They must warn Emma and get her away.

It was Pego who wrote the letter and had it delivered to the gate guard, Edwin Dibakwane.

But it had been too late.