Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

59

Hope Beneke came in the evening. “He must rest,” the nurse said protectively.

“She’s been waiting for a week,” his mother said.

“She’s the last one today.”

“I promise.”

As if he had no say in the matter.

They both went out and then she came in. “Van Heerden,” she said, her gaze taking in the drip, the now-dormant monitors, the bandages, and the deep, dark circles round his eyes as a worried frown clouded her face.

He looked at her and something registered: a glimpse, a shadow. Something had changed there, in the way she held her shoulders, the way she carried her head and her neck, in the fine adjustments of facial nerves and eyes. A certain acceptance.

She had lost her innocence, he thought. She had seen the evil.

“How can I ever thank you?”

“In the locker, bottom shelf,” he said, his voice not yet fully recovered from the oxygen tube. He didn’t want her to thank him, because he didn’t know how to react.

She hesitated for a moment, surprised, then bent down and opened the metal door of the locker.

“The document.”

She took it out.

“You have the right to know,” he said. “You and Tiny. But then it must be destroyed. That’s my agreement with Joubert.”

She glanced at the first pages and nodded.

“You mustn’t thank me.”

Her face registered a series of emotions. She started to say something, then swallowed the words.

“Are you…are you okay?”

She sat down next to the bed. “I’ve started therapy.”

“That’s good,” he said.

She looked away and then back at him. “There are things I want to say.”

“I know.”

“But it can wait.”

He said nothing.

“Kemp sends his regards. He says we needn’t have worried about you. Weeds don’t just wither.”

“Kemp,” he said. “Always first in line with sympathy.”

She smiled vaguely.

“You must rest,” she said.

“That’s what they all tell me.”

The morning of his discharge from the hospital, while he was dressing and packing, he received a parcel, an old six-bottle wine carton covered in brown paper and broad strips of tape. He was alone when he opened it. On top, in a white envelope, there was a message in painfully neat handwriting on a thin page of notepaper.

“I got a rand per dollar because the notes are so old. The diamonds did somewhat better. This is your half.”

Just the “O” for Orlando at the bottom.

Inside the carton, filling it and tightly packed, were masses of two-hundred-rand notes.

He closed the carton again.

Blood money.

♦

His house was clean and shiny. His curtains had been replaced with light material, white and yellow and pale green, which let the sun through. There were flowers on the table.

His mother.

He had to wash in the washbasin; a shower would wet the bandages. He dressed and walked slowly down to the garage, the keys to the pickup in his hand. He had to rest for a moment at the door. Light-headed.

He drove.

At the military hospital he had to wait while the male nurse went into Bester Brits’s room alone, then came out again. “He said you can come in, but you won’t be able to stay long. He’s still very weak. And he can’t speak. We’ll have to reconstruct his vocal cords. He can communicate with a notebook and a pen, but it’s very demanding work. So please, not long.”

He nodded. The nurse held the door open as he walked in.

Bester Brits looked like death. Pale, thin, his head in a brace, drip in the arm.

“Brits,” he said.

The eyes followed him.

“I’ve read Vergottini’s statement. I think I understand. As much as I can understand.”

Brits’s eyes blinked.

“I don’t know how you got out of Botswana alive, but I can guess. Someone arrived in time, someone…”

He saw the officer drawing a notebook toward him and writing. He waited. Brits turned the notebook so that he could read.

“CIA team. In chopper. Twenty minutes.”

“The CIA had backup?”

Bester blinked his eyes once.

“And when you recovered, your career was over, the money and the diamonds gone, the CIA mad as snakes, and the Boers looking like fools.”

Eyes blinking. Angry.

“And then you hunted them?”

He wrote in the notebook.

“Part-time.”

“The authorities would’ve preferred to forget about it?”

Blink. “Yes.”

“Jeez,” he said in wonderment. Twenty-three years’ worth of hate and frustration. “I saw the media cuttings of the past two weeks. They still don’t know what’s going on. Know only parts of it.”

He wrote. “And it’ll stay that way. Pressure from the U.S.”

Van Heerden shook his head. “They can’t. What about Speckle Venter? He has to stand trial.”

Brits’s face contorting. A grimace?

“Never.”

“They can’t let him walk.”

“You’ll see.”

They looked at each other. Suddenly he had nothing more to say.

“I just wanted to tell you that I think I understand.”

“Thank you.”

And then he wanted out.

♦

To the city. Roeland Street. To the computer people. Asked for Russell Marshall, the man who had doctored the photo of Schlebusch.

“Hey, man, you’re a hero,” Marshall said when he saw who it was.

“You believe the media. That’s not cool,” said Van Heerden.

“Have you brought more photos?”

“No. I want to buy a computer. And I don’t know where to start.”

“Avril,” Marshall said to the receptionist, “hold the calls. We’re going shopping.”

He unpacked the computer and the printer, plugged it in according to Marshall’s instructions, waited for it to boot, and clicked the mouse on the icon with WORD below it.

The white sheet of virtual paper lay clean and open on the screen. He looked at the keyboard. The same layout as the typewriter at the University of South Africa. He got up, put on a CD. Die Heitere Mozart. Light. Music for laughter.

He typed a paragraph. Deleted it. Tried again. Deleted it. And again.

He swore. Deleted it. Got up.

Perhaps Beethoven would help. Fourth Piano Concerto. He made coffee, took the telephone off the hook, sat down.

Where did one start?

At the beginning.

My mother was an artist. My father was a miner.