Heart of the Hunter

They knew. The spooks from the Cape knew about him and the GS. They had guessed his route correctly.

Not bad.

And if the jockey had reported him, they would know he knew they knew. If the man had reported him. He couldn'’t read his expression; that nothing-to-do-with-me attitude could have been a smokescreen.

They say you’re armed and dangerous.

The pistols. That he didn’'t even have. Well, let them miscalculate. But

dangerous’?

What did they know? Possibilities danced through his head and he felt the tension run through his body and then Otto Müller came to visit. In the night on a Karoo road he heard the voice of the Odessa instructor, the East German with the fine, almost feminine features below a grotesque bald head, nearly twenty years past. He heard the heavy Germanic accent, the stilted English.

It is game theory; it is referred to as the Nash equilibrium. When two players have no reason to change from their chosen strategies, they continue with those strategies. The equilibrium. How do you break the equilibrium? That is the question. Not by second-guessing, because that is part of the strategy and therefore part of the equilibrium. In a game of chess, you will lose if you think only of your opponent, think of every option, think of every possibility. You will go crazy. Think what you will do. Think about your strategy. Think how you can change it. How you can dominate. How you can break the equilibrium. Be the actor, not the reaction. That is the key.

Otto Müller. There was a bond between them; he was one of only ten operators, the rest from the Eastern bloc, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania. He was one of the chosen and he fascinated Müller.

I have never taught a schwarze before.

So he said,

I haff never taken orders from ze whitezer before.

Lord, he was full of fire in those days. Müller laughed at his put-on German accent.

You have the right… what is the words … attitude?

He didn’'t tell the Stasi man he had been born with that

attitude;

he didn’'t have the self-knowledge then, his

attitude

engulfed him, his

attitude

was him, his complete being.

A month or so ago he had read in a textbook about enzymes, very large molecules in the human cell that elicit a chemical reaction by presenting a surface that encourages that particular reaction. He pondered this, found in himself the metaphor of this biology. His whole life he had floated through the bloodstream of the world with a surface that encouraged violence as a reaction, until that moment when it had made him sick, that moment for the first time in thirty-seven years when he could step back from himself and see and find it repugnant.

The difference was that enzymes cannot change their nature.

People can. Sometimes people must.

In a game of chess, your opponent is looking for patterns of play. give him the pattern. give him the Nash equilibrium. Then change it.

But to do that he needed information.

They expected him to follow the Ni. He could change this pattern only if he knew what his options were. He needed a good road map. But where on earth could he get one?

Her first impulse after replacing the phone was to be with her children.

She fought it, understanding the need, understanding that Masethla’s cutting words made her look for comfort, but her head said she must get used to it, she should have known that Masethla would not like being leaned on from above, would be incapable, too, from a relatI've position of power of taking orders from a strong woman.

They were all like that.

Lord, why did there have to be men, why did she have to fight against their weak, brittle, fragile egos? That and the sex thing, the one-way traffic of their thoughts— if you were a woman, you were prey. If you didn’'t give in and jump into bed, you were a lesbian; if you were a woman in authority, you had slept your way to the top; if he was a man with more authority, then you were screwable.

She had learned these lessons hard. A decade ago, after a long, frustrating, and even painful realization that she would have to live with a constant of overt and covert innuendo and sexual advances, she had taken stock of herself and pinpointed her two physical assets. Her large mouth, wide and full-lipped, white and regular teeth, and her bust, impressive without being excessive. She had developed a deliberate style: no lipstick; small, severe steel-rimmed glasses, and hair always drawn back and fastened; outfits never too formfitting, neutral colors, mostly gray, white, and black. And her actions, interactions, communications, were refined until eventually the volume of erotic interest was turned down to acceptable, manageable levels.

But about the other thing, the ego, she could do nothing.

That is why she forced her thoughts away from her children, stood up and straightened, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt, smoothing her hair.

Rajkumar brought a result. “The other debit order, ma’am, the R129 per month?”

“What?” she said, not in the present right then.

“The other debit order on Mpayipheli’s bank account. The clearance code … I ran it down. We know where the money is going.”

“Yes?”

“To the CCE. The Cape College of Education.”

“For the child?”

“No. It’s a correspondence college. For adults.”

“Oh.”

“High school education. Grade ten to twelve. Someone is doing a course with them.”

There was little new in the information. “Thanks, Rahjev.”

Her cell phone rang. She checked the screen, which read

MAZIBUKO.

“Tiger?”

“I am letting Bravo come down from Bloemfontein. In our vehicles.”

“What for?”

“There’s nothing happening here. Two policemen and a speed cop with two vehicles. There’s a big thunderstorm on the way that looks bad, and there are two or three roads off the N1 between here and Beaufort West and who knows how many farm roads.”

“He’s on a motorcycle, Tiger.”

“I know. But if he spots the blockade and turns back, how do we pursue him?”

“With the Rooivalks.”

“In the rain?”

“How sure are you that it will rain?”

“Ma’am, it’s raining already.”

“It’s a five-hour drive from Bloemfontein, Tiger.”

“That’s why I want them to leave at once.”

She decided. “Okay, let them come.”

“Mazibuko out.”

“Tiger?”

“I’m here.”

“Mpayipheli. He might have been more than MK.”

“More?”

“don'’t underestimate him.”

“What do you mean? What have you found?”

“He … We don'’t know enough yet. Just don'’t underestimate him.”

“He’s still only one man.”

“That’s true.”

“Mazibuko out.”

She pressed the END button on the cell phone. Her eye caught the fax machine printing out a document. Stepping up to it she read the heading as she waited for it to finish. NIA.

“Well, well,” she said softly, keeping her fingertips on the paper till it finished and then picking it up.

Last known address— Derek Lategan: Orange river Wine Exports, P. O. Box 1J98, Upington, Northern Cape

Last known address— Quartus Naudé: 28 Fourteenth Avenue, Klein-mond, Western Cape

Masethla had supplied the information. She could imagine his internal struggle, his reluctance, irritation and fear that his outburst would be reported. A small victory for her. She found no pleasure in it.

Frowning, Radebe came over the floor to her with another document in his hand. “Here’s an odd one, ma’am. This report came in from Pretoria, but we hadn'’t given instructions.”

She took it from him.

Transcript of interview by V Pillay with Mr. Gerhardus Johannes Groenewald, 23 October, 21:18, 807 Dallas Flats, De Kock Street, Sunnyside, Pretoria

P

: You were on the integration team with Johnny Kleintjes?

G

: I was second in command.

“It was on my orders, Vincent.”

“Ma’am?”

“I phoned Pillay direct. Groenewald was in our records.”

Radebe looked at her, frowning still.

“I’m sorry, Vincent. I ought to have told you.”

“Ma’am, that’s not it… .”

“What is it?”

“I thought I knew all our agents.”

She kept eye contact with him, smiling reassuringly. “Pillay doesn'’t work full-time for us, Vincent. I don'’t want to interfere with your people.”

The frown lifted.

“Ma’am, there’s something else… .” His voice was soft, as if he didn’'t want the others to hear.

“Talk to me.”

“Mpayipheli, ma’am. We are treating him like a criminal.”

“He is one, Vincent.”

It seemed that he wanted to contradict her but thought better of it.

“He disarmed two of our agents, refusing a legal request to hand over state property. He stole a motorcycle.”

Radebe’s gaze was far-off. He nodded, but she did not feel that he agreed. He turned around. She watched him thoughtfully until he sat down.

Transcript of interview by V Pillay with Mr. Gerhardus Johannes Groenewald, 23 October, 21:18, 807 Dallas Flats, De Kock Street, Sunnyside, Pretoria

P: You were on the integration team with Johnny Kleintjes?

G: I was second in command.

P: Did you have access to the same material?

G: Yes.

P: Did you know Mr. Kleintjes had made backups of certain sensitive records?

G: Yes.

P: Tell me about it, please.

G: It’s ten years ago.

P: I know, Mr. Groenewald.

G: Most of that data is useless now. The people … Things have changed.

P: We need to know.

G: Those were strange times. It was … To suddenly see what the enemy had on you, to show them what we had, it was surreal. Your enemy was no longer your enemy. After all those years. To work with them, it was difficult. For everyone. Both sides.

P: You worked for the National Party government, before 1992?

G: Yes.

P: Proceed, Mr. Groenewald.

G: Some people on the team couldn'’t handle it. It was conditioning, hammered into you for so many years, the secretiveness, the idea of us against them. Stuff disappeared.

P: What sort of stuff?

G: Operational records. The kind of stuff individuals didn’'t want counting against them. When Johnny Kleintjes realized that people were deleting stuff, he began to make backups. We worked together, as fast as we could. And when one of the backup tapes disappeared, he started taking work home.

P: Did you know what material he took home?

G: He never hid anything from me.

P: What was it?

G: There were the X-lists of the politicians, judges, and intelligence people. You know … who is sleeping with whom, who has financial troubles, who’s in league with the opposition. And the E-lists. “E” for elimination. Who was killed. Who was to be taken out next. And the Zulu dossier.

P: The Zulu dossier?

G: You know, the Zulu nationalists.

P: I don'’t know, Mr. Groenewald.

G: You must know that in the Zulu ranks there is a conservative nucleus that still dreams of Zulu independence?

P: Proceed, Mr. Groenewald.

G: They supported the former regime’s policy of separate development. They saw it as the way to their own sovereign Zulu state. Elements in the old regime were only too eager to help, promises were made, they worked intimately together. And then F. W de Klerk went and cheated them by unbanning the ANC and allowing free elections.

P: Yes?

G: The Zulu dossier contains names of the secret Organization for Zulu Independence, the OZI. There are politicians, businessmen, and a lot of academics. The University of Zululand was a breeding ground. If I remember rightly, the head of the History Department was head of OZI for years.

P: Is that all? Just a list of OZI members?

G: No, there was more. Weapons caches, strategy, plans. And the name of Inkululeko.

P: You’'ll have to explain.

G: Inkululeko. A code name. It’s the Zulu word for freedom. A member of the OZI who infiltrated the ANC years back. A mole. But high up. There was talk that he also worked for the CIA during the Cold War. Lately I heard a rumor that considering the present government’s attitude to Libya and Cuba, for example, he was still helping the Americans.

P: Do you know who it is?

G: No.

P: But Johnny Kleintjes knows?

G: Johnny knew. He saw the list.

P: Why did he never expose it?

G: I don'’t know. I wondered about that. Remember the violence in Kwa-Zulu, Pillay? Remember the political murders, the intimidation?

P: I remember.

G: I wondered if he didn’'t use the list as a trump card in negotiations. You know, a sort of “stop your nonsense or I will leak the list” type of thing. The unrest decreased, later.

P: But that is rather unlikely, isn'’t it?

G: Yes. It is.

P: What do you think the real reason is?

G: I think Johnny Kleintjes knew Inkululeko personally. I think he was a friend.

14.

Through the lens of a hidden camera or the eyes of a voyeur the scene would have been sensual. Allison Healy sat before the hi-fi in her restored duplex in Gardens. She was naked. Her plump body glowed from the hot bath, the creams and oils she was massaging into her skin. The CD playing was Women of Blue Chicago: Bonnie Lee, Karen Carroll, Shirley Johnson, and her favorite, Lynne Jordan. Music about women’s trouble with men. There was a cigarette in the ashtray on the small table next to the navy blue easy chair, smoke trailing upward in a tall, thin column. The room was softly lit by one table lamp alongside the small television.

Despite the potential an eye could find in this stage, her thoughts were far from sexual. She was considering a motorcyclist speeding through the night, a mysterious man hunted by law enforcement and intelligence officers. She wondered why.

Before she left the office she had phoned Rassie Erasmus of the Laingsburg police again. Asked questions. There was mischief in their talk, as if they were co-conspirators against the secret forces of the state, but the chat had yielded little new information.

Yes, the request to be on the lookout had come from the regional police head office. And the order to report there if they spotted something. No, it was never explicitly stated that it was the Presidential Intelligence Unit looking for Mpayipheli, but the police had their own language, their own references, their jealousies and envy. He was fairly certain it was the PIU. And from what he could gather, the fugitive had something the PIU was after.

Any news on Mpayipheli, Rassie?”

“No. Not a word.”

She reached for the journalist’s study bible— the telephone directory. There were three Mpayipelis and four Mpayiphelis listed. All in Khayalitsha or Macassar, but none had the initial T. She phoned every number, aware of the late hour, knowing she would be disturbing hardworking people in their sleep, but she had a job to do, too.

“I am so sorry to bother you so late, but can I speak to Thobela, please?”

Every time the same response: a sleepy voice saying, “Who?”

Just to be sure, she had searched with Ananzi and Google on the Internet, typed in “Thobela Mpayipheli” and to be thorough, “Thobela Mpayipeli” and clicked on SEARCH .

Your search— Thobela Mpayipheli— does not appear in any documents.

So she had turned off the computer, took her handbag, said good-bye to the few colleagues still at work, and come home to a long hot bath, half a glass of red wine, her skin-care routine, music, and a last cigarette.

She rose to pack away the bottles and jars in the bathroom and returned to lie back in the chair, drawing deeply on the tobacco, closing her eyes to let Johnson’s “As the Years Go Passing By” flow over her. It evoked nostalgia in her, for Nic, for the intensity of those moments. No. Longing for a journey. To the smoky blues bars of Chicago. To a world of pulsing, moaning rhythms, sensual voices, and strange new experiences, a new uncontaminated life.

Focused on the music. Sleep was near. The prospect of a long, well-deserved rest. She wasn'’t due back at work until noon.

Where was he now, the big, bad Xhosa biker?

He was two kilometers from Leeu-Gamka, the headlights turned off, the GS standing in the veld a few hundred meters from the road. He stripped off the suit, locked it in one luggage case, put the helmet in the other, and began walking toward the lights.

The night air was sharp and cool, carrying the pungent scent of Karoo shrubs crushed under his boots. The weariness of the last fifty or sixty kilometers had invaded his body, his eyes were red and scratchy, he was thirsty and sleepy.

No longer twenty, his body complained. He knew he had been running on adrenaline, but the levels were running low. He knew the next few hours till dawn would be the most difficult. He walked briskly to get his circulation going, his boots crunched gravel on the road verge rhythmically. Lights from the petrol station on the right and the police station on the left of the highway came steadily closer. There was no movement, no sign of life, no roadblock or other indications of a search. Had the petrol jockey in Laingsburg said nothing? He owed him, he thought. It was so difficult to read people, how oddly they behaved. Why did the man not tell him he would keep quiet? Why keep him worrying? Was he still making up his mind?

He walked into the petrol station. There was a twenty-four-hour kiosk, a tiny café. Behind the counter was a black woman, fast asleep with her chin dropped onto her chest, mouth half open. He took two cans of Coca-Cola from the fridge, a few chocolate bars from the shelf. Behind her on the wall he saw the rack of road map books.

He cleared his throat. Her eyes opened.

“Sorry, sister,” he said softly, smiling sympathetically at her.

“Was I asleep?” she asked, baffled.

“Just resting a bit,” he said.

“What time is it?”

“Just after three,” he said.

She took the cool drinks and chocolate and rang them up. He asked for a map book.

“Are you lost?”

“No, sister, we are looking for a shortcut.”

“From here? There are no shortcuts here.” But she took the book down from the shelf and put it in the plastic bag with the other things.

He paid and left.

“drive safely,” she called after him, and settled back in her chair.

He looked back once he was a little way off. He could see through the window that her head had dropped again. He wondered if she would remember he was there, in case anyone asked.

Halfway back to the bike he popped open a can of Coke, drinking deeply, burped the gas, drank again. The sugar would do him good. He emptied the can, opened a Milo bar, pushing the chunks into his mouth. A white Mercedes flashed past on the highway, spoiling his night vision for a while. He put the empty can and candy wrappers back into the plastic bag.

He would have to inspect the map book. He had no flashlight. The moon gave less light now, almost setting in the west. He should have bought a flashlight.

Perhaps the moonlight was sufficient. He left the road, cutting across the veld, for the first time thinking of puff adders. The night was cold, they shouldn'’t be active. He reached the GS and took the book out of the bag.

The routes and roads were a spiderweb of alternatives, spooky-looking in the dim light. He strained to see, the moon cast a shadow of his head over the page, forcing him to shift around, his eyes irritatingly close to the page. He found the right page.

There was a road from there, from Leeu-Gamka to Fraserburg.

Fraserburg?

The direction was wrong, too far west, too few possibilities. He must go north.

He saw there were two additional routes from Beaufort West, snaking threads to Aberdeen in the east and Loxton approximately north-northwest. That might do. He turned to the next page to follow it. Loxton, Carnarvon, Prieska. Too far west.

Paging back, he followed the N1 to Three Sisters. The road forked there. To Bloemfontein or Kimberley Paging on, he found the Kimberley route, traced it with his finger. Promising. Many more options.

In a game of chess, your opponent is looking for patterns of play. give him the pattern. Then change it.

“We will change it at Three Sisters, herr obergruppenführer,” he said softly.

He would have to fill up in Beaufort West. He would ask how far it was to Bloemfontein, what the road was like. With any luck, the spooks would hear about it. And at Three Sisters he would take the road to Kimberley.

He took out the second can of Coke.

It was raining in the Great Karoo. The weather had rolled in over the plains, rumbling and spitting like some giant primordial predator, visible in the night sky only when lightning came searching in fantastic forms, and now here it was above them, the rains of Africa, extravagant and pitiless.

Captain Tiger Mazibuko cursed, splashing through ankle-deep puddles, wiping water from his face. The rain fell in dark sheets; thunder growled continuously.

He had been checking the maps in the traffic officer’s car. There were at least two side roads they would have to block. Halfway between the roadblock and Beaufort West one turned east to Nelspoort, the other was closer, forking west to Wage-naarskraal. Unfamiliar routes, but alternatives available to a fugitive. And they had too few men and too few vehicles. He would have to deploy four RU members; the police van would have to drop them off, minimizing the effect of his roadblock here. They would have to guard the roads in pairs. They would be on foot, while he had a motorbike. Visibility was terrible in this weather. It was a fucking fiasco. But that was typical. Backward. Everything was backward. You could say what you liked about the Americans, but if the FBI Hostage Rescue Team had been here, it would have been four-wheel drives and armored vehicles and helicopters. He knew because he had been there, in Quantico, Virginia, for four months; he had seen it with his own eyes. But no, in Africa things worked differently; here, we fucked up. Here, we putter around with a bloody bakkie and a Corolla and a frightened traffic cop and two Boers who worry about their caps getting rained on and just one fucking middle-aged Xhosa on a motorbike— jissis, couldn'’t the fucker get a more respectable form of transport? Even the bad guys were backward in Africa.

He shook his fist at the heavens, which for a moment were still. He screamed his frustration, an uncanny sound, but the rain drowned it out.

He pushed his head into the tent. Four soldiers looked dumbstruck at him.

“I have to send you out,” he said, calm and under control.

The early hours began to take their toll in the Ops Room; urgency had leaked away.

She struggled to decide whether to send people to Derek Late-gan and Quartus Naudé tonight.

They weren’t compelled to cooperate. They were retired agents, had taken the package, probably not benign to the present government. A visit at this time of night would just complicate matters. She weighed that against the need for information. What could they contribute? Could they confirm that Mpayipheli had worked for the KGB? What difference would that make to the investigation?

Let it wait, she thought. She looked up at the big chart of southern Africa on the wall.

Where are you, Mpayipheli?

Are you on the Ni? How strong is your motivation? Are you sleeping somewhere in a hotel room while we make the wrong assumptions about you?

No. He was out there, somewhere; he couldn'’t be far from Maz-ibuko now. Contact. That is what they needed to shake off the lethargy, to regain momentum, to be in control again.

Contact. Action. Control.

Where was Thobela Mpayipheli?

She stood up. There was another job to do.

“May I have your attention, everyone,” she said.

Unhurried, they turned to her.

“This time of night is always the worst,” she said. “I know you’'ve had a long day and a long night, but if our calculations are right, we can finish this before eight o’clock.”

There was little response. Blank faces gazed back at her.

“I think we must see how many people we can relieve for an hour or two. But before we decide who is going to take a nap, there are some who wonder why we regard this fugitive as a criminal. I can understand why.”

Bloodshot eyes looked back at her. She knew she was making no impression.

“But we must also wonder where all that money came from. We must remember he worked for organized crime. Remember that he hired out his talents for the purpose of violence and intimidation. That he stole two firearms, after rejecting the chance to work with the state. See the nature of the man.”

Here and there a head nodded.

“We must be professional. There are too many gaps in our knowledge, too many questions unanswered. We have a very good idea now of what is on that hard drive. And that news is not good. We are talking about information on a mole at the highest level, code name Inkululeko. We are talking about very, very sensitive information that can cause untold damage in the wrong hands. Our job is to protect the state. Sympathy has no place in this. If we put everything into the balance, there is only one choice: be professional. Keep focused. Look at the facts, not the people behind them.”

She looked over the room.

“Have you any questions?”

No reaction.

But no matter. She had planted the seed. She had to force herself not to look up at the ceiling where she knew the microphones were hidden.

15.

His thoughts roamed freely, for this road did not require much concentration. He thought of this and that, knowing he must get some sleep but not wanting to waste the darkness. Somewhere beyond Three Sisters once the sun was up he would find a screened and shaded place in the veld for a few hours’ rest. He was familiar with the landscape of sleep deprivation, knew the greatest danger was poor judgment, bad decisions. His thoughts jumped around: Who were the spooks that were after him? How desperate were they? What was the whole purpose, the stuff on the drive that cast a hex over him?

In one month’s time Pakamile would be finished with grade one. They could leave the township. How long had they been talking of this?

She didn’'t want to. She always wanted to stick to the known, afraid of change. As she had been with him, when he had started courting her. When he had first seen her, that time in the investment consultant’s office, her hands— such deft, slim hands— her grace and pride, had been like a beacon to him. She wasn'’t even aware of him, but he could barely hear what the man was saying, she had consumed him so. He had been in love before, now and then, sometimes lust, sometimes more than that, but never absolutely right, never the way it was with Miriam, and she wanted nothing to do with him at first. The father of her child had put her off men, but he couldn'’t think of anything but her— Lord, to be in love like a teenager at his age, sweaty palms and heart beating haywire when he sat with her in Thibault Square in the bright sun and watched the cloud on the mountain grow and shrink and grow and he tried to hide the longing, afraid to scare her, his desire to touch her, to hold her hand, to press her against him and say, “I love you, you belong to me, let me keep you safe, I will chase away your fears like an evil spirit, I will cherish you, hold you and honor you.”

He had to wait a year before he could make love to her, a year, twelve months of sighs and dreams, not at all what he had expected, soft and slow, quenching, and later his fingers on her body, no longer a young woman’s body, found the traces of motherhood and he was overwhelmed with compassion, his hands traced the marks in awe at this thing that she had accomplished, the life she had created and carried and borne; in her and on her she carried the fullness of her vocation, and he could only trace it with his fingertips, so conscious of his incompleteness, so filled with the urge to find his own.

How would he tell her of the land he had bought? He already knew how she would react, how she clung to the things she had control over, because there was so much she could not control. The battle she had fought to get where she was, in her house with her son, had been so long, so hard in a world of poverty and violence. Her work, her house, her daily routine— it was her sanctum, her shield, her very survival.

One Saturday he had looked up from the mathematics textbook he was studying and decided that today was the day. She had her needlework in her hands, he had turned down the radio and told her that in that time when he had stared into his own eyes, his urge had been to get away, to go back to where he came from, to continue his life’s journey back to the source, to begin again, a new life. To build something with his own hands— hands that had broken— perhaps a house, with his sweat and muscle and concentration, a place to live. To dig his fingers into the ground, to turn the earth and to plant and grow. He began to search, and weeks later he found it in the Cala valley, a beautiful place where the mist rose up against the mountain slopes in winter, where as far as the eye could see, the veld was an undulating green of fertility, Xhosa country, the landscape of his youth and his people.

He was on his way, busy with the final arrangements, when Miriam had crossed his path, and now, months later, the urge remained. But he could no longer do it alone, for he was no longer alone. He asked her to come with him. Her and Pakamile. They would take the child out of this harsh world and show him his heritage, let him learn other values, give him a carefree youth. There were schools there, in town, where he would get his education. She wouldn'’t have to work. It would be just the three of them; he could provide, he would provide, he would build this new life for them.

She was quiet for a long time, the needle and thread moving rhythmically in her hands. Then she said she needed to think about it— it was a big decision— and he nodded, grateful that she would at least consider it, that her first answer had not been no.

The lightning brought him back. It seemed there was rain up ahead. He looked at the odometer, another sixty to Beaufort West. The fuel was below half. The eastern horizon was changing color, he had to make town before daybreak to refuel. He opened the throttle, 160, feeling the tiredness in his body, 170, he checked the figures on his digital watch, 04:43, the night was nearly over, he had not come very far and there was a long way to go today. Kimberley— if he could get there, he could get a plane, 180, perhaps to Durban, to break the pattern, from Durban to Maputo, Maputo to Lusaka or something, but keeping flexible, 190, be adaptable, get this thing over and then go back, so Miriam would see he would never desert her, 200, the white lines on the road flew past, too fast, he had never gone so fast. Yes, the new day was a red ribbon in the east.

Two more vehicles arrived, an Opel Corsa and an Izuzu bakkie, policemen climbing out stiff-legged, pulling their raincoats tight around their bodies, irritated by the early call out and the rain. They walked over to Mazibuko.

“The sergeant called over the radio to say he has dropped off your men.”

“I know. We have radio contact. Where’s the sergeant now?”

“They have gone home. Their shift is over.”

“Oh.”

“The road will get very busy once it’s light. Are you stopping everything?”

“Just the necessary. Are you here to help?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must move your vehicles.”

“How?”

He directed them. He wanted a formation that would make running the roadblock impossible. They followed his instructions, pulling their vehicles into the road while he waded through puddles to the helicopter and pulled open the door. The flight engineer lay asleep in the back with mouth agape. The pilot was up front, awake.

“Do you have a weather report?” asked Mazibuko.

“Yes,” said the pilot. “Rain. Any minute now.” He smiled broadly at his own joke.

“The rest of the day?”

“The system will move east. It will clear in the afternoon.”

“Fuck.”

“You can say that again.”

Mazibuko pulled his cell phone from under his jacket and punched in a number.

“How far are you?” he asked.

“Just beyond Richmond,” said Lieutenant Penrose, second in command of the Reaction Unit.

“You must move.”

“We are driving as fast as we can, Captain.”

“Is it raining there?”

“Not yet, but we can see it coming.”

“Fuck,” said Tiger Mazibuko.

“You can say that again,” mumbled the pilot in the Oryx.

The consignment of Cape newspapers landed in a pile on the desk of the news editor of the SABC’s morning television program in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, yesterday’s Argus and this morning’s Burger and Cape Times.

It was one of his moments of truth every morning: how well the news team in the south had fared against the competition, but also a window to another strange world, ships sinking in storms, Muslim extremists, gangs in the Cape Flats, the ongoing political circus.

MORE NNP LEADERS CROSS OVER read the Burger’s headline in Afrikaans. No surprises there. Nor in the rugby analysis: SKIN-STAD: WE HAVE NO EXCUSE

.

He overlooked the usual manipulative Christmas Fund article and skipped to the last front-page story of a thirteen-year-old cricket protégé. Mmmm. Country story, from Barrydale. He circled it with a thick red marker for follow-up.

Pulled the Times from the stack. NEW ALLIANCE FOR PROVINCE? the headline cried. And THERE GOES THE RAND AGAIN. Then his eye fell on the third front-page story. SPOOKS SEEK BIG, BAD BMW BIKER by Allison Healy He read it.

“Molly,” he called, but there was no response.

“Molly!”

A face appeared at the door.

“Get that asshole in the Cape on the line. Right now.”

“Rooivalk One, this is Ops Control, come in, over.” There was urgency in Quinn’s voice. He waited a moment, got no reaction He made sure the frequency on the digital panel was correct, called again. “Rooivalk One, this is Ops Control, come in, over.”

“This is Rooivalk One, Ops Control. What have you got for us? Over.” The voice was a little sleepy.

“We have contact, Rooivalk One. Repeat, we have contact. Subject is four minutes out of Beaufort West on the Ni on the way to Three Sisters. We want you in the air. Do you read me? Over.”

“We read you, Ops Control, we read you. Rooivalk One and Two operational. Over.”

“What is your expected time of interception, Rooivalk One? Over.”

“Expected time of contact, ten minutes, Ops Control, repeat, ten minutes. Over.”

Quinn clearly heard the big engines being started up in the background. He spoke louder automatically. “We just want to chase him on to Three Sisters, Rooivalk One. We want presence, but no contact. Do you understand? Over.”

“No contact, Rooivalk One confirming, no contact.”

The pitch of the engines hit high. “Are you aware of the weather status, Ops Control? Over.”

“We know it’s raining at Three Sisters, Rooivalk One. What is your situation? Over.”

“The rain is threatening, Ops Control. There’s a helluva system up north. Over.”

“Rooivalk One on the way, Ops Control. Over.”

“Rooivalk Two ditto, over.”

“We will keep contact, Rooivalk One, the channels stay open. Report when you intercept. Ops Control over and out.”

“Roger, Ops Control. Rooivalk One over and out.”

Quinn leaned back and looked around. Janina Mentz was busy on the cell phone with Tiger Mazibuko. The few people who had rested since four A.M. were back at their posts. There was a tingling in the air. The Ops Room was awake.

Allison Healy was dreaming of her mother when the phone rang. The dream was an argument, a never ending, disconnected fight over nothing, and she was relieved by the sound. In her dream she lifted the instrument to answer, but it continued ringing.

She made a noise, a groan of reluctance to rise out of the deep sleep, sitting half upright in bed, the sheet falling away to bare her rounded nakedness to the room.

“Hullo.”

“Allison?” It was the voice of a colleague, she couldn'’t place which one.

“What?”

“Are you awake?”

“Sort of.”

“You had better come down here.”

“What’s going on?”

“There’s a shoeshine man downstairs. He wants to talk to you.”

“A shoeshine man?” She wondered if she was awake. “He’s a friend of your big, bad Xhosa biker.” “Oh shit,” she said. “I’m coming.”

16.

He had drunk coffee and swallowed an uninteresting sandwich at the petrol station while the attendant filled up, and he had asked how far it was to Bloemfontein and if there were police on the road. He had tried to look like an “armed and dangerous” fugitive and had no idea if anyone would take the bait. The jockey was jumpy as a cat in a dog run, but that meant nothing and now the dark bank of clouds hung before him, twenty, thirty kilometers away, and the road stretched out before him, the light washing the Karoo in pastels. He rode fast, 185, because he wanted to pass Three Sisters on his way to Kim-berley before they could react, and the caffeine had awakened anxiety that he should have felt since Laingsburg. If they knew he had taken the motorbike and knew he was on the Ni, why had there been no attempt to stop him, why were they not waiting for him?

Never mind, he thought, never mind.

He was here and he had done all he could to establish Bloemfontein as his destination. All he could do now was ride as hard as he could, try 200 kilometers per hour; in daylight perhaps it would be less terrifying. He kicked down to fifth and twisted the ear of the great machine, feeling the vibration of the two flat cylinders, the boxer engine— strange name. He was consumed with urgency, anxiety. Where were they? What were they up to? What were they thinking? And when he heard the thunder, his first instinct was that it had come from the heavy clouds up ahead, but the noise was continuous and his heart turned cold. It was an unnatural thunder and then a dark thing swept over him, a huge shadow whose noise drowned out the boxer beneath him and he knew they were here; he knew what they were up to.

Miriam Nzululwazi was rinsing Pakamile’s porridge bowl in the kitchen. She missed Thobela, he was the one who brought good humor to the morning. Before, it had been a silent, almost morbid rush to be ready before the school bus came and she had to catch the Golden Arrow to the city. Then had come the man who swung his feet off the bed at the crack of dawn with a lust for life, who made the coffee and carried the fragrant steaming mugs to the bedrooms, singing all the way— not always in tune, but his deep voice buoyed up the house in the morning.

She had said the boy was too young for coffee, but he said he would make it especially weak. She knew that hadn'’t lasted long. She had said she didn’'t want to hear that Afrikaans radio announcer in her house, but he said he and Pakamile couldn'’t learn to be farmers by listening to the music of Radio Metro every morning. They listened to the weather forecast and the market prices and the talk about farming topics, and the child was learning another language, too. He kept Pakamile on the go with RSG when the boy dawdled, saying, “Pakamile, it’s raining on the farm,” or “The sun is shining on the farm today, Pakamile, you know what that means?” And the boy would say, “Yes, Thobela, the plants are growing with chlorophyll,” and he would laugh and say, “That’s right, the grass is getting green and sweet and fat, and the cattle are going to swish their tails.”

This morning she had switched on the radio to compensate for his absence, to restore normality. She listened to the weather forecast from habit, wanting to shake her head— here was Miriam Nzululwazi listening to Afrikaans; Thobela had changed so many things. She must go and see how far along Pakamile was. “Pakamile, have you brushed your teeth?”

“No, Ma.”

“It’s going to be hot on the farm today.”

“Oh.” Uninterested. He was missing Thobela, too. The time signal sounded on the radio, time for the news, she must hurry. The newsreader’s somber voice sounded through the house, America in Afghanistan, Mbeki in England. The rand had dropped again.

“don'’t dawdle, Pakamile.”

“Yes, Ma.”

Petrol was going up. Thobela would always talk back to the announcers and newsreaders, would always say when petrol prices were announced each month, “Get to the diesel price— Pakamile and I have a tractor to run,” and then he and the boy would grin at each other and Pakamile would mimic the Afrikaans word trekker, rolling the rs that drew out each end of the word.

“According to a Cape newspaper, intelligence authorities are hot on the trail of a fugitive, Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli, who allegedly stole a motorcycle in Cape Town and is thought to be heading …” She ran to the kitchen and snapped off the radio before Pakamile could hear. Stole a motorcycle.

Stole a motorcycle, Thobela?

Her hands trembled; her heart beat in her throat.

What had he done?

In the Ops Room the voice of the pilot came clearly over the speakers. “Rooivalk One to Ops Control. We have intercepted. Thirty kilometers outside Beaufort West, fugitive on a yellow motorcycle, estimated speed 200 kilometers per hour. This guy is sending it. Over.”

They applauded, the entire room, punching the air, shouting. Janina Mentz smiled broadly. She had been right, but mostly she felt relief, more than anything else, enormous relief.

“Ops Control to Rooivalk One, we hear you, interception verified. Just stay behind him, Rooivalk One. Do not attempt contact.”

“Confirm no contact, Ops Control. We are just chasing him on.”

“Ma’am,” said Radebe, but over the applause she couldn'’t hear him.

“Ma’am?”

“Vincent?”

“The vehicle team says we must get hold of a Cape Times.”

“Why?”

“They say there are posters all over town, ma’am.” It took an effort to change gears, to make the shift and understand what he was saying. “What do they say, Vincent?” The anxiety in her voice quickly silenced the entire room, only the radio static hissed.

SPOOKS

SEEK

BIG, BAD

BIKER

It was like a blow to her chest.

“Will you get us a paper, Vincent?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Quinn, tell Mazibuko the subject is on his way, he must confirm contact with him. Rahjev …”

“Yes, ma’am?”

She looked up at the bank of television screens on the wall. “Put on TV2 for us. And eTV And please ask someone to monitor the radio news.”

“Okay, ma’am.”

The police. She knew the leak came from the police.

Luckily, this thing was almost over.

The helicopter flew low over him, its dark belly scarcely a hundred meters above his head, and then it swooped back behind him and when he looked around he saw there were two of them, side by side, predatory birds biding their time behind him. He could feel the vibrations of their great engines in his body; the adrenaline ran thickly in his veins; the accelerator was fully open, but he knew it was in vain— these things were much faster. A truck came from ahead. The driver with disbelieving eyes nearly swerved in front of him. Why were they hanging back?

The needle was just beyond 200, the cloudbank loomed. Oncoming traffic had windshield wipers and lights on; he began to hope: How deep was this weather? How hard was it raining? Would the helicopters follow him in? He wanted to pass a car, the driver confused by the tremendous noise from above, brake lights— oh God, here’s trouble— he swerved just in time, spray hit the helmet visor— shit— he was going too fast, he saw the rain ahead, a dense curtain, spatter became drops, hard to see, dying to lift a hand and wipe, but at this speed … A truck in front of him, he couldn'’t maintain this speed, couldn'’t see, he braked, closed the throttle, then the rain hit, sheets, gusts, the drops hard and stinging on his body, the truck’s tires spurting up plumes of mist, he couldn'’t see oncoming cars, slower, slower, at last wiping his visor, just rearranging the water patterns. The rain was harder now, African rain, the lorry moved over, he went down a gear, accelerated, past but not fast, visibility was terrible— what to do?— and then he realized the helicopters’ noise was fading, they were no longer with him.

“My name is Immanuel,” he said to Allison Healy “I’m the shoeshine man.”

She put out her hand to him. “Hullo, Immanuel.”

“I get the Cape Times every morning. I fetch my lot at the back here, I sell them. And when I have set out all my stuff, then I read it because there are not many clients so early.”

“I understand,” she said patiently.

“So this morning I read about Thobela.”

“Mpayipheli?”

“He is my friend. And the things you wrote about him are not right.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is not a ‘big, bad biker.’ ”

“Uh … It’s just a way of writing, Immanuel.”

“But it’s not true. He’s a good man. He’s a war veteran.”

A veteran?”

“That’s right. He was a soldier in the Struggle. He fought in lands far away. Russia and Germany.”

“MK?”

“He fought for all of us.”

“You say he was an MK fighter?” This was news. Big news.

Immanuel just nodded.

“Why did he steal the motorcycle?”

“That’s not true. Thobela doesn'’t steal.”

“How do you know, Immanuel?”

“I know him. He’s my friend. We talk, three, four times a week. He is an honest man. A family man.”

“He has a family?”

“It’s the most important thing in his life. Why would he steal?”

“Where can I find his family?”

“It’s impossible. Ops Control, visibility is too poor. Heavy turbulence. We have to turn back. Over.” Static crackled on the radio connection, the voice breaking up.

Quinn looked to Janina Mentz. She shook her head; he translated: “NegatI've, Rooivalk One, stay with him. Over.”

“Ops Control, visibility is zero. We don'’t know where ‘with him’ is. We don'’t even have visual contact with each other. These are nonoperational conditions. Over.”

He looked at Janina. She stood with folded arms, her lips thin. “How many million rand did it cost to develop these machines? And they can’t fly through rain.”

Quinn waited.

“Tell them to turn around. Tell them to make sure he doesn'’t go back.”

Her cell phone rang in her pocket. She looked over the bank of televisions, where the country’s channels were flickering: early-morning cartoons, local news, sports, CNN, the voices and music whispering. On TV2 the newsreader was talking. Behind him was a graphic of a man on a motorbike.

The cell phone rang.

Rahjev Rajkumar touched a panel, and the sound filled the room:

“… somewhere in the Western Cape on a stolen motorcycle. Considered to be armed and dangerous, it is not clear why authorities are seeking Mr. Mpayipheli at this time.”

She felt like swearing. She picked up her phone.

“Mentz,” she said grimly.

“Ma, Lien says I’m fat,” said her daughter in a whiny tone.

He crept forward at fifty kilometers per hour, the leather gloves were sodden, his hands cold although he had turned on the electric heaters in the handgrips. His biggest problem was seeing the road ahead, the inside of his helmet was steamed up and rain poured down the outside, the road was slippery. How to see the traffic ahead in time. The urge for speed and distance gnawing at him. At least the helicopters were quiet, but he knew they were out there somewhere. He had to get away.

They must want him very badly to use that sort of technology.

Johnny Kleintjes, what is on that hard drive?

They had waited for daylight, patient and easy, like a cat for a mouse, waited for the early morning, knowing he would be tired, knowing that the helicopters were excessive, that they would intimidate and conquer.

They were not fools.

The helicopters had stayed behind him.

Like dogs herding a sheep.

Into the pen.

They were waiting for him. Somewhere up ahead they were waiting.

Allison Healy’s finger ran down the pages of the phone book, found “Nzululwazi,” found “M. Nzululwazi, 21 Govan Mbeki Avenue.” She scribbled the number down in her notebook, pulled the phone closer, and dialed. It rang.

A war veteran. A family man. A good man.

Still ringing.

What was going on here? Why were they after him?

Ring, ring, ring. There was nobody home.

Time to ring Laingsburg again. Perhaps there was news.

17.

Seventeen kilometers south of the Three Sisters roadblock the gravel road turns west off the Ni, an insignificant branch going nowhere, merely a connection that ends in a T junction at the normally dusty route between the forgotten villages of Sneeukraal and Wagenaarskraal.

Two soldiers were standing nearly three hundred meters from the paved road where the police van had dropped them off in the bend of the first turn. Little Joe Moroka and Koos Weyers were dry under their plastic raincoats, but the cold had seeped through their camouflage uniforms. Their faces were wet; water ran down the barrels of the R .6 assault rifles and from there streamed down to the ground.

In the hour before dawn they had talked about sunrise and the light that would bring relief, but the rain still poured down. The only improvement was the visibility extending another forty or fifty meters to expose the low thorn trees and Karoo veld, the stony ridges and pools of mud.

It had been twenty-four hours since they slept, if you could even count that restless dozing on the Oryx. Their exhaustion was showing in the feebleness of their legs and the red scratchiness of their eyes, in the dull throbbing in their temples. They were hungry. Conversation ran to a fantasy of hot, sweet coffee, sausage, eggs and bacon, and toast with melting butter. They could not agree on the necessity for fried mushrooms. Moroka said fungus was snail food; Weyers responded that when taste was at issue, 60 million Frenchies couldn'’t be wrong.

They did not hear the motorbike.

The rain was a soundproof blanket. The exhaust of the GS fluttered softly at the low revs needed for the muddy road. The soldier’s senses were dulled by weariness and tedium, and their voices drowned out the last chance of warning.

Later, when Little Joe Moroka gave his full report in the face of the spitting fury of Captain Tiger Mazibuko, he would attempt to break down and reconstruct each moment: They should not have stood so close to each other. They should not have been talking, should have been more alert.

But there are some things you cannot plan for, such as the fact that the fugitive had lost control. The straight just before the bend had a good surface where the bike would have accelerated; the turn would have been sudden and unexpectedly sharp. And just in front of them it was muddy, thick snotty porridge where a boot would sink twenty centimeters deep. The rider had followed the contour of the road formed by the regular traffic, but in the mud the front wheel had lost its grip at the critical moment.

They saw him— saw the light over the predatory beak of the monster machine and heard the engine when it was right in front of them, an apparition. Moments, fractions of moments, within which the senses register, signals are sent, the brain interprets and searches via a network of tired synapses for the right reaction in the memory banks of endless training.

In reflection Little Joe Moroka would will himself to react faster, but in the real moment he registered the uniform snicking of safety catches as he and Weyers reacted in unison, conditioned by training, the motorbike sliding, iron and steel colliding with Weyers. The rider falling away from the machine, Moroka staggering, slipping, falling on his back, finger in the guard of the R6 pulling the trigger unwilled, shots in the air, rolling, jumping up. The shoulder of the fugitive driving into his midriff, falling again, winded.

Captain, that man, I don'’t know how he did it. I saw him fall, I saw him falling over the front of the bike to the right of Weyers, but when I stood up he hit me, he was so fast… .

He’s fucking forty years old, Mazibuko would scream at him, the commander’s face centimeters from his.

Rain in his eyes, gasping for air, boots kicking for a grip to get up, the rider on top of him, bashing him in the face with the helmet, pain coursing through him. The man grabbed his firearm, pulled, jerked and twisted it from his grip. Blood, his blood, against the front of the helmet, then the barrel of the R.6 in his eye and he could only lie there in the mud until the man pushed up the helmet visor and said, “Look what you’re making me do.” He heard Weyers groaning, “Joe.” Weyers calling him but he could not turn his head to his mate. “Joe?” A weird expression on the face of the man above him, not anger— sorrow almost. “Joe, I think my leg is broken.”

“Look what you made me do.”

The digital radio at Tiger Mazibuko’s hip came to life and he heard an unexpected word: “Hello.” Immediately temper flamed up in the tinder of his frustration and discomfort and exhaustion.

“Alpha One receiving and why the fuck aren'’t you using radio protocol? Over.”

“What is your name, Alpha One?” He didn’'t know this voice. It was deep, strange.

“This is a military frequency. Please get off the air immediately over.”

“My name is Thobela Mpayipheli. I am the man you are looking for. Who are you?”

It was a bizarre moment, because there was joy in it, tempered with a sudden deep apprehension. He knew something had happened to one of his teams, but that would take some level of skill. It would take a worthy opponent.

“My name is Captain Tiger Mazibuko,” he said. And I am talking to a dead man. Over.”

“No one needs to die, Captain Tiger Mazibuko. Tell your masters I will do what I have to do, and if they leave me alone, there will be no blood. That is my promise.”

“Who did you steal that radio from, you bastard?”

“They need medical help here, west of the Ni, the Sneeukraal turnoff. Your men will tell you the serious injury was an accident. I am sorry for it. The only way to avoid that is to avoid confrontation. I am asking you nicely. I don'’t want trouble.”

A wonderful thing happened in Tiger Mazibuko’s head as the meaning of the man’s words was assimilated and processed, like tumblers falling into place. The end result was the synaptic equivalent of an explosion of white fire. “You’re dead. You hear me, you’re dead.” He ran toward the nearest vehicle. “You hear me, you cunt, you fuckin’ shit.” No, the helicopter. He spun around. “If it’s the last thing I do, you’re gone, you cunt, you fuckin’ dog.” The helplessness of the distance between them was driving him insane. “Get this thing going, now,” he told the pilot. “Da Costa, Zongu, get everybody,” he shouted. “Now.” Back to the pilot: “Get this fucking chopper in the air.” He touched the weapon at his belt, the Z88 pistol, jumped out of the helicopter again, ran to the tent, pulled open a chest, grabbed the R.6 and two spare magazines, ran back. The Oryx engines turning, Team Alpha came running. He held the radio to his lips. “I’m going to kill you, I swear, as God is my witness, I’m going to kill you, you fucking piece of shit.”

Like a condemned man, Rahjev Rajkumar read the words on www.bmwmotorrad.co.za to the whole room, knowing the tidings he brought would not be welcome. “At home all around the world. Adventures are limitless with the BMW R 1150 GS, whether on hard surfaces, pistes or gravel tracks. Uphill and downhill, through valleys and plateaus, forests and deserts— the R1150 GS is the perfect motorcycle for every adventure.”

“He can ride dirt roads,” said Janina.

The people in the Ops Room were quiet, the murmur of voices from the television bank suddenly audible.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “I take responsibility for this one.”

She ought to have made sure. She should have had questions asked. Should never have accepted the conventional thinking.

She walked over to the big map of the country hanging on the wall and checked the distance between the turnoff and the roadblock. It was so near. She had been right. About everything. He had taken the Ni. He was an hour later than she had predicted, but he was there. But for the rain

She looked at the great stretches of the North West Province.

What now? Mpayipheli’s choices multiplied with every thin red stripe that represented a road, no matter what the surface. Even with Team Bravo in action, there were simply too many holes, too many crossroads and junctions and turnoffs and options to cover.

What to do now?

She needed a hot bath, needed to wash the night out of her hair and scrub it from her body. She needed new clothes and fresh makeup. A good breakfast.

Her eyes wandered to the final destination. Lusaka.

She knew one thing. He had turned west. Written off the direct route through Bloemfontein. She traced a new line. Through Gaborone, Mmabatho, Vryburg, and Kimberley That was the strongest possibility.

The storm had saved him, but now it was his enemy. They knew the system was two hundred kilometers wide, but he could only guess. He had fallen on the gravel road, not too skilled. He would have to ride slowly in the mud, carefully. He would consider his choices. He would wonder where they were. He would look over his shoulder for the helicopters, check the road ahead for soldiers. He was tired and cold and wet. Sore from the fall.

five, six hundred kilometers to Kimberley. How fast could he go?

She checked her watch. Of the seventy-two hours, twelve had passed. Sixty remaining. Six, seven, eight hours to reach Kimberley. A lot could happen in that time.

She looked around at the waiting faces throughout the room. Anxious. Tired. Chagrined. They needed rest, to regain their courage. A hot shower and a hot breakfast. Perspective.

She smiled at the Ops Room. “We know where he is, people. And he has only one place to go. We’ll get him.”

At the T junction he nearly fell again. As he braked sharply the motorbike slid and he had to wrench his body to stay upright.

Pain focused in his shoulder. The signpost opposite him said Lox-ton to the left, Victoria West to the right. He hesitated for long seconds, wavering. Instinct made him turn left because it was the only unpredictable option he could make. He kept moving, the events that lay behind him resting heavily on him; he would have to check the map again.

He would have to sleep.

But it was raining, he couldn'’t just park in the veld and lay his head down, he needed a tent.

The dirt road was bad, the surface erratic, where it dipped it was easy to expect the soft mud; he kept to the middle. His hands were freezing; his head dull now that the adrenaline had worked itself out of his system. He wanted to defer thinking about the two soldiers and his own deep disappointment when he picked up the motorbike and got going again, fleetingly surprised at the lack of damage, at the engine that sprang to life at the first turn, taking off with back wheel waggling in the sodden ground. He was disappointed in himself, over the incredible hatred that had come over the radio, but he didn’'t want to think of that now.

He made a list of his problems. They knew where he was. They would count his options on a map. They were using the army, unlimited manpower, helicopters. Vehicles? He was weary, a deep fatigue, his shoulder muscles were damaged or badly bruised, his knee less so. He had been driven from the highway, the fast route was denied. It was raining.

Lord, Johnny Kleintjes, what have you got me into? I want to go home.

Add that to the list: he had no stomach for it; he wanted to go home to Miriam and Pakamile.

He saw the homestead out of the corner of his eye. To the left of the road, a ruin between stony ridges and thorn trees that suddenly made sense. It altered the predictable, offered a solution and rest. He pulled the brakes carefully, turned about slowly, and rode back to the two-track turnoff The gate lay open, ramshackle and neglected. He went slowly up the rocky track, the handlebars jerking in his hands. He saw the cement reservoir and the windmill, the old house, windows filled with cardboard, walls faded by the Karoo sun, tin roof without gutters, the water running off in streams. He rode around to the back and stopped.

Did anyone live here? No sign of life, but he remained on the bike, hand on the accelerator. No washing on a line, no tracks, no vehicle.

He turned the key, switched off the engine, clipped open the helmet.

“Hullooooo …”

Just the sound of rain on the roof.

He climbed stiffly off, put the bike on the stand, careful to prevent it from tipping over in the soft ground. Pulled off the sodden gloves and the helmet.

There was a back door, paint long since peeled away. He knocked, the sound was hollow—“Hullo”— he turned an antique doorknob— was it locked?— put his good shoulder to the door, pushed, no luck.

He walked around, checking the road. No sound or sign of traffic.

No door on that side. He walked back, tried to peer through a window, through a crack between cardboard and frame, but it was too dark inside. He went back to the door, turning the knob, bumped hard with his shoulder, a bang, and it swung wide open. A field mouse scurried across the floor, disappearing into a corner; the smell was of abandonment, musty.

The small coal stove against the wall was once black, now dull gray, the handle of the coal scuttle was broken off. A dilapidated cupboard, iron bedstead with a coir mattress. An ancient wooden table, two plastic milk crates, an enamel basin, dust and spider-webs.

For a moment he stood there, considering. The motorbike could not be seen from the road. Nobody had been there in weeks.

He made up his mind. He fetched his bag from the bike, closed the door properly, and sat down on the mattress.

Just for an hour or two. Just to ease the fatigue.

He pulled off the leathers and boots, found warm clothes in his bag, shook the worst dust from the mattress, and lay down with the bag as his pillow.

Just an hour or two.

Then he would study the map and define his options.

The news that the fugitive had outmaneuvered the helicopters and the roadblock, that one Special Forces soldier was being flown to Bloemfontein by helicopter, spread through the law enforcement community like a brushfire. By the time Allison Healy contacted her source in Laingsburg, it had garnered the baroque embellishments of a legend in the making.

“And he is ex-MK. He’s a forty-year-old has-been fucking up the spies left, right, and center,” Erasmus told her with relish so that she could have no doubt that the police were enjoying every minute of the drama.

“I know he’s a war veteran,” she said, “but why are they after him?”

“How did you know that?” Erasmus was hungry for more gossip.

“I had a visitor. An old friend. Why are they chasing him?”

“They won’t say. That’s the one thing the fuckers won’t say.”

“Thanks, Rassie. I have to go.”

“I’ll phone you if I hear something more.”

She put the phone back in her bag and walked in to the Absa offices in the Heerengracht. At the information desk she had to wait in line. The newest information milled in her head. The phone rang again.

“Allison.”

“Hi, Allison, my name is John Modise. I do a talk show for SAFM.”

“Hi, John.”

“You broke the story about the black guy on a motorcycle.”

“Yes.”

“How would you like to be on the show this morning? Telephone interview.”

She hesitated. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It would compromise my position, John. You are competition media.”

“I understand, but your next edition is only tomorrow morning. A lot can happen …”

“I can’t.”

“Did you know this guy was Umkhonto we Sizwe?”

“I did,” she said with a sinking heart. Her lead was disappearing. “How did you find out?”

“My producer got it from the Beaufort West police. He slipped through their fingers just an hour ago.”

Now they were all singing like canaries.

“I know.”

“You see, it’s public knowledge. So there’s no harm in being on the show.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Okay, but if you change your mind before eleven, you call me.”

“I will.”

It was her turn at the desk. “Hi,” she said. “I’m looking for a Ms. Miriam Nzululwazi. She works here.”

18.

I'am finished with all these things. I am finished with fighting, with the violence, with shooting and beating and hate. Especially the hate. Finished,” he said.

That was in the hospital in Milnerton, beside the bed of his white friend Zatopek van Heerden, the two of them full of medication and bandages and pain and the shared trauma of a strange and violent experience that he and the ex-policeman had gone through together by sheer chance. That was while he worked for Orlando Arendse. He had felt an inner glow, a Damascus experience of a new life vision, pumped up by the lucidum intervallum.

Van Heerden had stared expressionlessly at him, just his eyes betraying a hint of empathy.

“You don'’t believe I can change?”

“Tiny, it’s hard.”

Tiny.

That was his name. He had rejected it in the metamorphosis, part of the process of killing off the past, like a snake shedding its skin and leaving it behind as a ghostly reminder. He had become Thobela. It was his christened name.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

“Where do you get that populist crap?”

“Read it somewhere. It’s true.”

“That’s Norman Vincent Peale or Steven Covey, one of those false prophets. Great white witch doctors.”

“I don'’t know them.”

“We are programmed, Tiny. Wired. What we are, we are, in sinew and bone.”

“We are growing older and wiser. The world is changing around us.”

Van Heerden was always excruciatingly honest. “I don'’t believe a man can change his inherent nature. The best we can do is to acknowledge the balance of good and evil in ourselves. And accept it. Because it’s there. Or at least the potential for it. We live in a world where the good is glorified and the bad misunderstood. What you can do is to alter the perspective. Not the nature.”

“No,” he had said.

They left it there, agreeing to differ.

When he was discharged and left the white man behind in the hospital, he said good-bye with so much enthusiasm for reinventing himself, on fire for the new Thobela Mpayipheli, that Zatopek had taken his hands and said, “If anyone can do it, you can.” There was urgency in his voice, as if he had a personal stake in the outcome.

And now he lay on a dusty, musty coir mattress in the middle of the Karoo and sleep eluded him because the scene with the two soldiers played over and over in his head. He sought the singularity, the moment when he had regressed, when that which he wanted to be had fallen away. The high blood of battle rising so quickly in his head, his hands so terribly ready to kill, his brain clattering out the knowledge of the vital points on the soldier’s body like machine-gun fire, despairing— don'’t, don'’t, don'’t— fighting with himself, such deep disappointment. If Pakamile could see him … and Miriam, how shocked she would be.

“Look what you made me do.” The words had come out before they were formed. Now he knew it was displacement of blame; he needed a sinner, but the sinner lay within. Wired.

What could you do?

If Van Heerden was right, what could you do?

They went to visit Van Heerden once, he and Miriam and Pakamile, on a smallholding beyond Table View, at a small white house— his mother lived in the big white house. A Saturday afternoon, the family from the townships picked up at the taxi rank in Killarney Van Heerden and Thobela chatting straight off, the bond between them as strong as it always is for people who have faced death together. Miriam was quiet, uncomfortable; Pakamile’s eyes wide and interested. When they arrived Van Heerden’s mother was there to sweep the child away: “I’ve got a pony just for you.” Hours later when he came back, the boy’s eyes were shining with excitement. “Can we have horses on the farm, Tho-bela, please, Thobela?”

The attorney, Beneke, was also there, she and Miriam had spoken English, but it wouldn'’t work, lawyer and tea lady, the gulf of color and culture and three hundred years of African history gaped in the uneasy silences between them.

Van Heerden and he had made the fire for the barbecue outside. He stood around the fire, he told stories of his new job, of motorbike clients, middle-aged men looking for remedies for male menopause, and they had laughed by the burning rooikrans logs, because Thobela had a talent for mimicry. Later, when the coals were glowing and Van Heerden was turning the sausage and chops with a practiced hand, he had said to his friend, “I am a new man, Van Heerden.”

“I’m glad.”

He laughed at the man. “You don'’t believe me.”

“It’s not me who must believe, it’s you.”

They hadn'’t visited like that again. Rather, he and Van Heerden went somewhere to eat and talk once a month. About life. People. About race and color, politics and aspirations, about the psychology that Van Heerden had begun studying intensely to try and tame his own devils.

He sighed, turned onto his back, the shoulder aching more now. He had to sleep; he had to get his head clear.

What could you do?

You could walk away from circumstances that brought out the worst in you. You could isolate yourself from them.

The hatred in Captain Tiger Mazibuko’s voice over the radio. Pure, clear, sheer hate. He had recognized it. For nearly forty years it had been his closest companion.

It’s not me who must believe, it’s you.

It took Allison nearly fifteen minutes to convince the Xhosa woman that she was on Thobela’s side. Miriam’s mouth remained stern, her words few; she evaded questions with a shake of the head but finally gave in: “He’s helping a friend, that’s what. And now look what they’re doing.”

“Helping a friend?”

“Johnny Kleintjes.”

“Is that the friend’s name?” Allison did not write it down, afraid to intimidate the woman. Instead, she memorized it feverishly, repeating the name in her head.

Miriam nodded. “They were together in the Struggle.”

“How is he helping him?”

“Kleintjes’s daughter came around yesterday evening to ask Thobela to take something to him. In Lusaka.”

“What did she want him to take?”

“I don'’t know.”

“Was it a document?”

“No.”

“What did it look like?”

“I didn’'t see it.”

“Why didn’'t she take it herself?”

“Kleintjes is in trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“I don'’t know.”

Allison drew a deep breath. “Mrs. Nzululwazi, I want to be sure I’ve got this straight, because if I make a mistake and write something that is not true, then I and the newspaper are in trouble and that won’t help Thobela. Kleintjes’s daughter came to your house yesterday evening, you say, and asked him to take something to her father in Lusaka?”

“Yes.”

“Because her father is in trouble?”

“Yes.”

And Thobela agreed because they are old comrades?”

“Yes.”

And so he took the motorcycle …”

The tension and confusion were too much for Miriam. Her voice broke. “No, he was going to take the plane, but they stopped him.”

For the first time the reporter saw the stubbornness in the light of deep worry and put her hand on the thin shoulder. For a moment Miriam stood stiff and humiliated before leaning against Allison, letting her arms fold around her, and the tears ran freely.

For two hours Janina slept on the sofa in her office, a deep dreamless sleep until the cell phone’s alarm went off. Her feet swung to the ground immediately and she stood up with purpose, the rest a thin buffer against fatigue and tension, but it would have to suffice. She showered in the big bathroom on the tenth floor, enjoying the tingling water, the scent of soap and shampoo, her thoughts going on to the next steps, laying out the day like a map.

She pulled on black trousers and a white blouse, black shoes, wiped the steam from the mirror, brushed her hair, made up her face with deft movements of fingers and hands, and walked first to her office for the dossiers and then to the director’s door.

She knocked.

“Come in, Janina.” As if he had been waiting for her.

She opened the door and entered. He was standing at the window, looking out over Wale Street toward the provincial government buildings and Table Mountain behind. It was a clear and sunny morning with the flags across the street waltzing lazily in the breeze.

“I have something to confess, sir.”

He did not turn. “No need, Janina. It was the rain.”

“Not about that, sir.”

When he stood etched against the sky like that, his hunchback was obvious. It was like a burden he carried. He stood so still, as if too tired to move.

“The minister has phoned twice already. She wants to know if this thing will become an embarrassment to us.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

“don'’t be, Janina. I am not. We are doing our job. The minister must do hers. She is paid to handle embarrassments.”

She placed the dossiers on the desk. “Sir, I involved Johnny Kleintjes in this.”

He did not move. The silence stretched out between them.

“On March seventeenth this year a Muslim extremist was arrested by the police on charges of possession of unlicensed firearms. One Ismail Mohammed, a leading player, probably a member of Pagad, Quibla, and/or MAIL. He repeatedly requested a meeting with a representative of the intelligence services. We were fortunate that the police approached us first. I sent Williams.”

The director turned slowly. She wondered if he had slept last night. She wondered if it was the same shirt he had been wearing yesterday. His face betrayed no weariness.

He walked over to the chair behind his desk, not meeting her eyes.

“Here is the full transcript of the interview. Only Williams, the typist, and myself know about this.”

“I am sure you had a reason for not showing me this, Janina.” Now for the first time she could see that he was tired, the combination of inflection and body language and the dullness in his eyes.

“Sir, I made a choice. I think you will eventually agree it was a reasonable one.”

“Tell me.”

“Mohammed had information about Inkululeko.”

It was a moment she had waited a long time for. He showed no reaction, said nothing.

“You know there have been speculations and suspicions for years.”

The director seemed to sigh as if releasing internal tension. He leaned back in his chair. “Do sit down, Janina.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She pulled the chair closer, drawing a breath to proceed, but he held up a small hand, the palm rose-colored, the nails perfectly manicured.

“You kept this from me because I am under suspicion.” Not a question, a mild statement.

“Yes, sir.”

“Was that the right thing to do, Janina?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think so, too.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No need to thank me, Janina. It is what I expect from you. That is how I have taught you. Trust no one.”

She smiled. It was true.

“Do you think it necessary now for me to know everything?”

“I think you need to know about Johnny Kleintjes.”

“Then you may tell me.”

She considered awhile, collecting her thoughts. The director would know of Inkululeko’s history back through the eighties, when the rumors in the leaders’ circle of the ANC were put down to counterintelligence maliciously planted by the regime to damage the unity between Xhosa and Zulus in the organization. But even after 1992 the rumors persisted, the violence in Kwa-Zulu, the Third Force. And since the 1994 elections the feeling that the CIA were too well informed.

She tapped the dossier in front of her. “Ismail Mohammed says in the interview that Inkululeko is a senior member of the intelligence arm. He says he has proof. He says Inkululeko is working for the CIA. Has been for years.”

“What proof?”

“Not one big thing. Many small ones. You know the Cape Muslim extremists have connections with Qaddafi and Arafat and bin Laden. He says they deliberately fed misinformation into the system here and watched things unfold in the Middle East. He says there is no doubt.”

And we must assume they have decided to remove Inkululeko by giving us information.”

“We must consider that possibility at least, sir.”

He smoothed his tie slowly as if removing imagined wrinkles. “I think I understand now, Janina. You fetched Johnny Kleintjes out of retirement.”

“Yes, sir. I needed someone credible. Someone who would have had access to the data.”

“You sent him to the American consulate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He was to tell them he had data he wanted to sell. And if it had been me, I would have told Johnny to use the September eleventh attacks as motivation. Something like ‘I can no longer sit back and watch these things happen while I have information that can help you.’ ”

“Something like that.”

And the name of Inkululeko as an afterthought, an incidental extra?”

She merely nodded.

“So that they can know we know. Clever, Janina.”

Apparently not clever enough, sir. It may have backfired on us.”

“I would guess you had a few names you wanted to experiment with, a few possible Inkululekos? To test reactions?”

“Three names. And a lot of harmless information. If the Americans said the data is nonsense, we would know he is not one of those three. If they pay, we know we are on target.”

And my name was one of them.”

“Yes, sir. After Johnny’s visit to the consulate, the CIA reacted as we expected. They told Johnny not to make direct contact again, that the building is being watched. don'’t call us, we’ll call you. I arranged for his phone to be monitored. A week ago they called, a smokescreen for a meeting in the gardens at the art museum. There they asked Johnny to take the info to Lusaka.”

“What went wrong, Janina?”

“We think Johnny used his own initiative, sir. We think the hard drive he took was empty. Or filled with pointless data.”

“Johnny Kleintjes,” said the director with nostalgia. “I think he did not completely trust you, Janina.”

“It’s possible. It took a lot of persuading to get him to go along. The three names …”

“He knows all three.”

“Yes, sir.”

And he does not believe any one of the three is Inkululeko.”

“That’s right.”

“Typical of Johnny. He would want to check things through first. But with an escape route if the Yanks got serious.”

“I suspect Thobela Mpayipheli has the real hard drive.”

“The one you prepared.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you do not want that data to reach Lusaka.”

“I thought we would stop Mpayipheli at the airport. I wanted to send the drive with one of my own people. That is still the plan.”

“More control.”

She nodded. “More control.”

The director pulled open a drawer in the big desk. “I too have a confession, Janina,” he said, lifting out a photograph, a dog-eared color snapshot. He held it out to her. She took it carefully, holding it up to her eyes with her fingertips on the edges of the faded card. The director, young— easily twenty years ago. He had his arm around a tall broad-shouldered black youth, supple and muscular, regular features, a strong line to mouth and chin, determined. In the background was a military vehicle.

“Dar es Salaam,” said the director. “Nineteen eighty-four.”

“I don'’t understand, sir.”

“The other man in the photo is Thobela Mpayipheli. He was my friend.” There was a faint smile lingering on the small Zulu’s mouth.

A chill swept over her. “That is why you let the Reaction Unit come.”

He looked up at the ceiling, his thoughts in another time. She waited patiently.

“He is a ruthless man, Janina. A freak of nature. He is … he was only seventeen when he enlisted. But they picked him out from the start. While the others had general infantry training in Tanzania and Angola, he was sent with the elite to the Soviet Union. And East Germany. The KGB fell in love first and kept us up-to-date with his training. The Germans pinched him. They knew …”

“That’s why there is no record.”

The director was still somewhere in the past. “He was everything they needed. Dedicated, intelligent, strong— mentally, too. Fast… He could shoot, ah, Tiny could shoot… .”

“Tiny?”

A dismissive gesture. “That is a story in itself. But above all he was unknown in their world, a wild card that the Americans and Brits and even Mossad knew nothing of. A black unknown, a brand-new player, an unrecorded assassin with the hunger …” The director pulled himself back to the present, his eyes slowly focusing on hers.

“They bought him from us, Janina. With weapons and explosives and training. There was one small problem. He was unwilling. He wanted to come back to South Africa, to shoot Boers and blow up the SADF. His hate was focused. They sat with him for nearly two weeks, trying to explain that he would make a contribution, that the CIA and MI5 were hand in glove with the Boers, that war against one was war against the others. Two weeks … until they turned his head.”

She pushed the photo back across the desk. She met the director’s eyes and they sat, staring, testing, and waiting.

“He makes me think of Mazibuko,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Was he the so-called Umzingeli?”

“I don'’t know the whole story, Janina.”

She stood up. “I can’t afford to let him reach Lusaka.”

The director nodded. “He is the sort of man who will retrieve Johnny and the data.”

“And that would not do.”

“No, that would not do.”

Silence descended between them as each considered the implications, till the director said: “I want you to know I am going home for some rest. I will be back later. Will you be sending the usual team to watch me?”

“It will be the usual team, sir.”

He nodded wearily.

“That is good.”

19.

The editor of the Cape Times looked at the rounded figure of Allison Healy and thought once more, If she could lose ten or fifteen kilograms … She had a sensuality about her. He wondered if it was the curves, or the personality. But there was a beautiful slender woman somewhere inside there.

“… and nobody else knows about this Johnny Kleintjes, which gives us a great angle for tomorrow’s story. I’ve got his address, and I will get an interview with the daughter. And this afternoon, we’ll get a pic of Mrs. Nzululwazi and the boy. Exclusive.”

“Right,” said the editor, wondering if she was a virgin.

“But there’s more, Chief. I know it. And I want to use this radio show to put some bait in the water. Stir the pot.”

“You’re not going to leak our scoop, are you?”

“I’m going to be all coy and clever, Chief.”

“You’re always coy and clever, Allison.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and he laughed.

“Just make sure you plug the newspaper. And if you can let it slip that we will be revealing a lot more tomorrow morning …”

Self-assured, at ease, Janina sat at the big table.

“Can you hear us, Tiger?” she asked.

The entire room listened to the captain’s voice as it came over the speakerphone. “I can hear you.”

“Good. What is your status?”

“Team Bravo has arrived with our vehicles. We expect the Oryx back any moment and another is on the way from Bloem-fontein.” She could hear the impatience in Mazibuko’s voice, the suppressed anger.

“What’s the weather doing, Captain?”

“It’s not raining so hard anymore. The air force says the system is moving east.”

“Thank you, Tiger.” She went to stand alongside Vincent Radebe. “We have established beyond reasonable doubt that Thobela Mpayipheli was an MK member who received specialized training in the Eastern bloc. There are still some details outstanding, but he is a worthy opponent, Tiger. don'’t be too hard on your team.”

Just hissing on the line, no response.

“The point is, he is not an innocent citizen.” She looked pointedly at Radebe, who boldly met her eyes.

“He knows how serious we are about that data and he did not scruple to use violence. He chose confrontation. He is dangerous and he is determined. I hope we all understand this.”

Some heads nodded.

“We also know now that the data he is carrying is of an extremely sensitive nature for this government and especially for us as an intelligence service. So sensitive that you have the right to use any necessary force to stop him, Tiger. I repeat. Any necessary force.”

“I hear you,” said Captain Tiger Mazibuko.

“In the next half hour I will be requesting the mobilization of the available manpower from the army bases at De Aar, Kimberley and Jan Kempdorp. We need more feet on the ground. There are too many possible routes to watch. Tiger, I want you centered in Kimberley so that you can respond quickly. given the background of the fugitive, we will need a concentration of highly mobile, well-trained men when he makes contact again. Let the police and the army watch the roads. I will ask that the entire Rooivalk Squadron be moved to Kimberley on standby.”

“How certain are you of Kimberley,” Mazibuko’s voice came back over the ether.

She thought a little before answering, “It’s an informed guess. He’s tired, he’s wet, hungry, and the rain is slowing him down. He hears the clock ticking and his time running away. Kimberley is the closest to a straight line between him and Botswana, and he will see Botswana as freedom and success.”

She saw one of Rahjev Rajkumar’s people whispering in his ear.

“Is there something, Raj?”

“Radio program, ma’am. SAFM.”

“Any questions?” She waited for a reaction from Radebe and Mazibuko.

“Mazibuko out,” said the captain over the speakerphone. Radebe sat and stared at the digital instruments before him.

“Switch on, Raj,” she said.

… joined by Allison Healy, crime reporter from a Cape Town newspaper, who broke the saga of the big, bad Xhosa biker in her newspaper this morning. Welcome to the show, Allison.

Thanks, John, it is a privilege to participate.

You have interesting new information about our fugitive motorcyclist?

I have, John. We have information that casts a new light on Mr. Mpayipheli’s motivation, and it seems this is something of a mercy mission. His motive, it seems, might just be noble.

Please go on.

I’m afraid that’s about all I can say, John.

And how did you get that information, Allison?

From a source very close to him. Let’s call it a love interest.

“Quinn,” said Janina with suppressed rage.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Bring her in.”

He looked bewildered.

“Miriam Nzululwazi. Bring her in.”

“Very well, ma’am.”

… on the side of the fugitive?

It is not for me to choose sides here, John, but there are two things that I find puzzling. According to information provided to the police by what is allegedly the Presidential Intelligence Unit, Mr. Mpayipheli stole the BMW motorcycle. But that seems to be untrue. No charges have been filed with the police, there is no theft investigation, and I spoke to the owner of the dealership just five minutes ago, and the truth is that Mr. Mpayipheli left a note behind, saying he had no choice but to borrow the machine and will pay for the privilege. That does not sound like theft to me.

And the second thing, Allison?

The Cape Times broke the story more than five hours ago, John. If the fugitive is guilty of anything, why has the government not stepped forward to set the record straight?

I see where you are going. What do you think is happening here?

I think the government is once again trying to cover up, John. I wouldn'’t be surprised if some form of corruption or something similar is involved. I’m not saying that’s it. I’m just saying I will not be surprised. I’m working on several new leads, and the Cape Times will have a full story tomorrow morning.

Thank you very much, Allison Healy crime reporter of a Cape-based newspaper. This is John Modise and you are tuned to SAFM. The lines are open now; if you have an opinion on the matter, please call us. And remember, the subject this morning is the fugitive motorcyclist, so let’s stick to that…

“Monica Kleintjes,” said Janina. “We will have to bring her in, too. Before the media flock to her door.”

“Right, ma’am,” said Quinn. “But what about her telephone, if they call again from Lusaka?”

“Can you redirect the line here?”

“I can.”

Janina’s thoughts were jumping around. How had the Healy woman got that information? How had she made the connection between Mpayipheli and Nzululwazi? What could be done to slow her down?

… Pretoria chapter of the Hell’s Angels. Good morning, Burt.

Good morning, John. What we want to know is where the man is. Do you have information?

We know he was in the vicinity of Three Sisters at six o’clock this morning, Burt. Where he is now is anybody’s guess. Why are you asking?

Because he’s our brother, man. And he’s in trouble.

Your brother?

All bikers are part of a greater brotherhood, John. Now, you may have heard a lot of untruths about the Angels, but I can tell you, when one of our brothers is in trouble, we help.

And how do you think you will be able to help?

Any way we can.

Rajkumar made a deprecating sound and turned the volume down. “All the worms are creeping out of the woodwork,” he said. “No,” said Janina. “Leave it on.”

He dozed shallowly, fitfully crossing the border of sleep, dreams and reality mixing. He was riding the GS down infinite roads, feeling the faint vibration of the bike in his legs, talking to Pakamile, hearing the rain on the roof of the cottage and then the sucking sound of tires in the mud, an engine at low revs, but he only really woke up to the bang of a car door. He rolled off the mattress, continued rolling up to the wall beneath the window.

Anonymous from Mitchell’s Plain, go ahead, you are on the air.

Hello, John, can you hear me?

You are on the air, go ahead.

I’m on the air?

Yes, Anonymous, the whole country can hear you.

Oh. Well. I just wanted to say this Mpayipheli is not the hero you make him out to be.

We are not making him into a hero. We are letting the facts speak. What have you got for us?

I don'’t know if it is the same guy, but there was a Thobela Mpayipheli working for a drug dealer in Mitchell’s Plain. Big black man. Mean as a junkyard dog. And they were saying he was ex-MK. They used to call him “Tiny.”

Working for a drug gang?

Yes, John. He was what we call an “enforcer.”

“We,” Anonymous? Who are “we”?

I used to be a drug dealer in the Cape Flats.

You were a drug dealer?

Yes.

In Mitchell’s Plain?

No. I worked from the southern suburbs.

Sounds like a franchise business. And what does an “enforcer” do, Anonymous?

He makes sure the dealers pay the supplier. By beating them up or shooting them. Or their families.

And Mpayipheli worked as an enforcer for a supplier?

He worked for the biggest supplier in the Peninsula at the time. That was before the Nigerian Mafia came to town. These days, they run the show.

The Nigerian Mafia? We must have you back for a radio show all of your own, Anonymous. So what made you quit dealing?

I did time. I’m rehabilitated now.

There you have it. Strange but true.

This is a strange country, John, believe me.

Amen, brother.

He lay on the floor, breathing the dust. Footsteps sounded as if they were circling the motorbike. Then a voice called.

“Helloooo …”

Instinctively he looked around for a weapon, cursing himself for not keeping the soldier’s assault rifle. He could break a leg off the table. He stopped one stride away. No more violence, no more fighting. Implications ran through his mind. Did this mean the journey was over, could he go home? It meant Johnny Kleintjes was fucked; he stood in limbo between instinct and desire.

“Hello, the house …” A man’s voice. Afrikaans. Was it the farmer?

His hands hung by his sides but were clenching open and shut.

“Thobela?” he heard the voice say his name. “Thobela Mpayipheli?”

Soldiers, he thought, adrenaline flowing through his veins. One step to the table, he grabbed one wooden leg in his hands and pressed his foot against the tabletop. No, said his mind, no, let it be over.

Go ahead, Elise, what is your take on this unfolding drama?

Two things, John. First, I don'’t believe this drug business at all. Why is it that people always want to drag someone down the moment they hit the limelight? Second, I am the secretary of the Pretoria BMW Motorcycle Club, and I just want to say we don'’t need the Hell’s Angels to act on our behalf. Mr. Mpayipheli is riding a BMW, and if anybody helps him, it will be the BMW motorcycle fraternity. I don'’t know how the Hell’s Angels with their Harleys are going to travel on the gravel roads of the Northern Cape.

So the fugitive is a member of a BMW club?

No, John, but he rides a BMW.

And that gives you ownership.

We don'’t own him, John. But neither do the Hell’s Angels.

What’s this about gravel roads?

Mr. Mpayipheli slipped through the roadblocks by traveling on gravel roads. He’s on a GS, you know.

And what is a GS?

It’s an on road/off road motorcycle.

Like a scrambler?

No. Yes, I suppose you could call it a scrambler with a thyroid condition.

Ha. Now there’s the quote of the day. How do you know he slipped through a roadblock?

It is all on our website, John.

Your website?

Yes. www.bmwmotorrad.co.za. We have inside information.

And just how is your website getting inside information?

Oh, policemen ride BMWs, too, you know.

“I’m coming inside, Thobela, don'’t shoot. I’m your friend.” don'’t shoot. They still thought he was armed.

“I’m on my own, Thobela, be nice.” The door opened. “I’m on your side, my brother.”

He waited the space of a single heartbeat and dropped his shoulder in readiness.

“I can’t get it,” said Rahjev Rajkumar. The web browser showed an error message:

The page cannot be displayed. The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The website might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

“Motorrad has two rs,” said Vincent Radebe softly.

“How do you know?” said Rajkumar nastily.

“It’s German for ‘motorcycle.’ ”

He typed in the new address. This time the website loaded. At the top, under the page title were the words FOLLOW THE GS fugitive— AN INSIDE STORY.

He stood with his feet apart, shoulder lowered, the internal battle raging, knowing it was his moment of truth, knowing this was where he would win or lose— on so many levels.

The door swung slowly wider. The voice was soft and soothing. “I am a man of peace.”

A colored man, dressed in tattered suit, anonymous gray shirt, and a bow tie that could have been red in a previous era. His eyes were wide and he held his hands up in front protectively.

“Who are you?”

“I am Koos Kok,” he said very carefully. “You won’t kill me now, hey?”

“How do you know my name?”

“Just one look at that big motorbike. You are all over the radio. The ‘big, bad Xhosa biker.’ ”

“What?”

“Everyone is very excitable about you.”

“What are you doing here?” Mpayipheli straightened up.

“I was lonely for my winter house,” he said, motioning at the cottage. “I came to keep myself warm.”

“ ‘They had a roadblock at Three Sisters, manned by an army unit, some SAP and traffic authorities, and a big helicopter. They also had some Rooivalk attack helicopters at Beaufort West who tried to follow the GS, but the rain forced them back,’ ” Rajkumar read aloud from the website, and he wondered why fate had singled him out to be the bearer of bad news.

“Shit,” said Quinn.

“Go on,” said Janina.

“Apparently the GS took a side road, presumably the Sneeukraal turnoff, and went through a two-soldier roadblock, hurting one badly. Then he disappeared. That is all I have at the moment.

“ ‘The only way we can help this guy is if all BMW owners in the country unite. We must all gather at Three Sisters and try to find him. That way, we can help him get through to wherever he is going.’ ”

“They want to help him,” said Quinn.

“Who wrote that?” asked Janina.

“ ‘An Insider.’ That is all they say.”

“Fucking policeman,” said Quinn, and saw Janina’s disapproving eye. “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”

“Is there any more?” she asked Rajkumar.

“There are a few messages from guys who say they are going to help.”

“How many?”

He counted. “Eleven. Twelve.”

“Not many,” said Quinn.

“Too many,” said Janina. “They’ll get in the way.”

“Ma’am,” said Vincent Radebe.

“Yes?”

He held out the phone to her. “The director.”

She took the receiver. “Sir?”

“The minister wants to see us, Janina.”

“In her office?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I meet you there, sir?”

We have time for one more call. Burt from the Hell’s Angels, you back again?

Yes, John. Two things. We don'’t ride Harleys. Well, a few members do, but only a few. And this thing that the black guy belongs to the BMW people is bullshit.

Let’s watch the language, Burt. This is a family show.

I’m sorry, but they’re nothing but a bunch of fair-weather, breakfast-run weekend wannabe bikers.

What happened to the great brotherhood of motorcycle riders, Burt?

Real bikers, John. Not these Beemer sissies. That Mpheli… Mpayi… that guy out there is a real biker. A war veteran, a warrior of the road. Like us.

And you can’t even pronounce his name.

20.

They got two ministers for the price of one. The minister of intelligence was a woman, lean, as fitted her office, a forty-three-year-old Tswana from the North West Province. The minister of water affairs and forestry sat in the corner, a gray-haired white man, an icon of the Struggle. He said not a word. Janina Mentz did not know why he was there.

The director and she sat down in front of the desk. Janina glanced briefly at the director before she began to speak. He indicated with a minimal nod that she must hold nothing back. She filled in the background first: the Ismail Mohammed interview, the counterintelligence operation, and the things that had gone wrong.

“Have you seen the TV news?” asked the intelligence minister coldly.

“Yes, Minister.” Resignedly. Not for the first time did Janina wonder why politicians were more sensitive about TV than about newspapers.

“Every half hour there is something new over the radio. And the more they talk, the more he becomes a hero. And we look like the Gestapo.” A dainty fist emphasized her words on the wood of the desktop, her voice rose half an octave. “This cannot continue. I want solutions. We have a public relations crisis. What do I tell the president when he calls? And he will call. What do I say?”

“Minister … ,” said Janina.

“Two agents at the airport. Two Rooivalk helicopters and a whole brigade at Three Sisters and you don'’t even know where he is.”

Janina had no answer.

And everyone wonders why the rand falls and the world laughs. At Africa. At bungling, backward Africa. I am tired of that attitude. Sick to death of it. This cabinet”— the minister stood up, too angry to sit, her hands bracketing her words—“labors night and day, battling the odds, and what support do we get from the civil service? Bungling. Lame excuses. Is that good enough?”

Janina stared at the carpet. The minister drew a deep breath, collected herself, and sat down again.

“Minister,” said the director in his soft, diplomatic tones, “while we are speaking frankly, may I place a few points on the record. This is the first well-planned counterintelligence operation we have attempted, and may I say it is high time. It is not only necessary but also ingenious. Creative. Nothing that has happened has jeopardized the purpose of the mission. On the contrary, the longer this develops, the more genuine it will look to the CIA. Granted, things haven’t unfolded as planned, but that is the way life goes.”

“Is that what I must say to the president, Mr. Director? That is the way life goes?” Her tone was sarcastic and cold.

The director’s tone echoed hers: “Minister, you know shifting blame is not my style, but if the members of the police service were loyal to the collective state, the media would not be having a field day. Perhaps we should place the blame where it belongs: at the door of the minister of safety and security. It is high time he sorted this out.”

“This operation is my responsibility. My portfolio.” She had calmed down, but the mood was fragile.

“But the behavior of another department is jeopardizing the operation. Undermining it. We don'’t shirk taking our punishment, but it must be deserved. The circumstances at the airport were such that we wanted to avoid an incident. Our people acted with circumspection. As for the weather: our influence does not stretch that far.” Janina had never heard the director speak with such passion.

The minister was silenced. The director continued: “Consider for a moment the possibility that we can make a fool of the mighty CIA. Think what it would be worth on every conceivable level. Let them laugh at Africa. We will laugh last.”

“Will we?”

“We will conclude the operation successfully. And speedily. But someone must deal severely with the police.”

“How quickly can you conclude this operation?”

Janina knew it was her call: “Two days, Minister. No more.”

“Are you sure?”

“Minister, if the Department of Defence and the police work together, I will stake my professional reputation on it.” Janina heard herself say it and wondered if she believed it.

“They will cooperate,” said the minister fiercely. “What do I tell the media?”

Janina had the answer. “There are two possibilities. One is to say nothing.”

“Nothing? Have you any idea how many phone calls this office has had this morning?”

“Minister, no country in the world allows the media to interfere with covert operations. Why should we allow it here? Whatever you say, the media will write and broadcast what they wish; they will twist your words or use them against us. Ignore them; show them we will not be intimidated. Tomorrow, the day after, there will be some other event to attract their attention.”

The minister thought a long time. “And the second possibility?”

“We use the media to our advantage.”

“Explain.”

“The line between hero and villain is very narrow, Minister. It often depends on how the facts are interpreted.”

“Go on.”

“The fugitive was previously a member of a drug network that contributed to the collapse of the social structure and ruined the children on the Cape Flats. He misused his MK training for intimidation and violence. We suspect he is still involved— there are large unexplained sums of money in his bank account. He is a man who does not hesitate to parasitize an innocent woman and her child; he does not even have his own house. A reckless man who has seriously injured a young white soldier with deliberate intent, a man who twice chose to obstruct the purposes of the state when he had the chance to surrender himself. Innocent people, good citizens, or heroes do not become fugitives. There are many ex-MK who followed another path. Who chose to build this nation, not break it down. Who even now fight the good fight in the midst of unemployment and poverty. And all we need to do is turn the facts over to the media.”

The minister of intelligence nudged the gold-rimmed glasses farther up the bridge of her nose, thoughtful.

“It can work,” she said.

“You prefer the second option?”

“It is more … practical.”

From the corner sounded the melodious voice of the minister of water affairs and forestry. “We must remember one thing,” he said.

All the heads turned.

“We are talking about Umzingeli.”

Talking nonstop, Koos Kok had unloaded two chairs from the back of his dilapidated twenty-five-year-old Chevrolet El Camino van, and now they were seated at the table, eating bread and tinned pilchards in rich chili tomato sauce and drinking cheap brandy out of enamel mugs.

“I am the great Griqua troubadour,” he introduced himself in his Griqua dialect, “the guitar player that David Kramer overlooked, skeefbroer by birth, hardly voorlopig a child, always vooraan since I was little, norring crazy for music, langtanne to go to school… .”

“I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Thobela said, halting him.

“I don'’t speak Xhosa, my brother, sôrrie, it’s a skanne, and Great-Granpa Adam Kok went to live with you and all.”

“You’'re not speaking Afrikaans, either.”

“Dutchman Afrikaans? Well, I can.” And his story emerged on a flood of shamelessly self-centered words, the wrinkled, weathered face animated with the telling in conventional language until he reverted to the tongue of his people and Thobela had to frown and put up his hand to get a translation. Here was the Troubadour of the Northern Cape, the entertainer of the “townies” who frequented the dance halls, where he sang of the landscape and the people with his guitar and his verses. “But I don'’t see a chance for the drukmekaar squeeze, I travel in summer, in winter this is my home, I make a fire and write more songs, and now and again when the feeling is too strong I will go jongman-jongman with the girls in Beaufort West.”

That morning he had had the radio on in his rusty old Chevy bakkie when he heard the news and later listened to John Modise, so he knew about the big, bad Xhosa biker running around loose in the area, and when he saw the motorbike behind his winter quarters, he knew straightaway. It was the work of the Lord, it was divine guidance, and he was not going to look on with pa-phanne, no, he was going to help.

“You are going to help me?” asked Thobela, his belly properly full and the brandy in his blood.

“Ja, my brother. Koos Kok has a plan.”

Tiger Mazibuko called Team Alpha together at the open door of the Oryx helicopter. The rain had diminished; blue cracks shone through the clouds, the drops were fine, and the wind restless.

“This morning I crapped out Little Joe in front of you all and I want to apologize. I was wrong. I was angry. I should have stayed calm. Joe, it wasn'’t your fault.”

Little Joe Moroka nodded silently.

“I just can’t handle it when something happens to one of my men,” Mazibuko said uncomfortably. He could see the fatigue drawn on their faces.

“We are going to Kimberley Anti-Aircraft School. There will be hot food and warm beds. Team Bravo will do first standby. The army and police will do the roadblocks.”

A few faint smiles. He wanted to say more, to restore the bond and minimize the damage. The words would not come.

“Climb up,” he said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Allison Healy drove to the southern suburbs, to Johnny Klein-tjes’s house, as it was in the telephone book. She used the hands-free cell-phone attachment to call the office for a photographer and then dialed Absa’s number. She wanted to ask Miriam about Thobela’s alleged drug involvement. She did not believe it. The radio contribution was thin on facts, heavy on insinuation.

“Mrs. Nzululwazi is not here,” said the receptionist.

“Can you tell me where she is?”

“They came to fetch her.”

“Who did?”

“The police.”

“Police?”

“Can I take a message?”

“No.” She felt like pulling over but she was on De Waal drive with the Cape stretched spectacularly before her. There was no road shoulder: she had to keep going, but her hands began to tremble. She searched for the number of the SAPS liaison officer and pressed the button.

“Nic, this is Allison. I need to know if you have taken Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi in for questioning.”

“I wondered when you would phone.”

“So you have got her?”

“I don'’t know what you’re talking about, Allison.”

“She is the common-law wife of Thobela Mpayipheli, the man on the motorcycle. Her employers said the police fetched her at work.”

“I know about him, but I don'’t know about her.”

“Can you find out?’

“I don'’t know. …”

“Nic, I’m asking nicely… .”

“I’ll look into it. And get back to you.”

“Another thing. There are rumors that Mpayipheli was involved with drugs on the Cape Flats. …”

“Yes?”

“Who would know?”

“Richter. At Narcotics.”

“Would you?” “Okay.” “Thanks, Nic.”

“Till the day I die I will feel responsible for that man,” said the minister of water affairs and forestry. He sat silhouetted against the window, the late-morning light forming a halo around him. Janina wondered if it was sorrow that made his voice so heavy.

“I was chief of staff: operations. I had to make the decision. We owed the Germans so much.”

He rubbed his hands over his broad face, as if he could wipe something away. “That’s not relevant now,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He folded his hands as if to pray.

“Once every six months I had a visitor from Berlin. A goodwill visit, you might say. A verbal progress report, nothing on paper, a diplomatic gesture to let me know how Tiny was getting on. How pleased they were with him. ‘He is a credit to your country.’ It was always a tall, lean German. They were all lean. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’ Every time they would update the score. Like a sport. ‘He has done six.’ Or nine. Or twelve.”

The minister of water affairs and forestry unfolded his hands and crossed his arms on his chest.

“They used him seventeen times. Seventeen.” His eyes leaped from the minister to the director to Janina. “The one they couldn'’t talk enough about was Marion Dorffling. CIA. A legend. Thirty or forty eliminations— it boggles the mind. Those were strange times, a strange war. And Umzingeli got him. Sniffed him out, tracked him for weeks.”

He smiled with fond nostalgia. “That was my suggestion, Umzingeli. The hunter. That was his code name.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side; the memories were incredible. He had forgotten them; for a minute or longer he was absent from the room. When he began to speak again his voice was lighter.

“He came to see me. Two months before the ’ninety-four elections. My secretary, well, there were so many people wanting to talk to me, she didn’'t tell me. She thought she was doing right to keep them away. Late one afternoon she came in and said, ‘There’s this big guy who won’t go away’ and when I went to see, there he was, looking apologetic and saying he was sorry to bother me.”

The head shook again. “Sorry to bother me.”

Janina Mentz wondered where this was leading, whether there was a point to all this meandering. Impatience welled up in her.

“I was ashamed that day. He told me what had happened since the fall of the Wall. His German masters had disappeared overnight. His pay had dried up. He didn’'t know where to turn. And it was open season on him, because the West had ahold of the Stasi dossiers and he knew they would come after him. It was a new world and everyone wanted to forget, except the ones who were hunting him. No one at our London office knew him; they were new personnel, knew nothing about him and didn’'t want to know. He lay low for a while, and when he eventually came home and came to me for work, I said I would help, but the elections came and the new government and I forgot about him. I simply forgot.”

The minister of water affairs and forestry stood suddenly, giving Janina a fright. “I am wasting your time,” he said. “It is my fault, I must take the blame. It is my fault he found another livelihood. But I want to say this. Something happened to that man, because if he were still Umzingeli, there would be at least four dead bodies for you to explain. If you can work out why he spared them, you have a chance of bringing him in.”

21.

Thank you, sir,” she said to the small Zulu on the stairs outside. He stopped with a serious frown on his face. “Not at all, Janina. I was just being honest. I really do think it is an ingenious operation.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Why didn’'t you say anything?”

“About your name being on the list?”

He nodded.

“I didn’'t think it relevant to the purpose of the meeting.”

He nodded again and walked slowly down the steps. She stayed where she was.

“Are you Inkululeko, sir?”

He walked to the bottom and turned and looked up at her with a faint smile before setting off on the long walk back to the office.

He lay in the back of the El Camino on an old mattress alongside the R1150 GS lying incongruously on its side. The baggage cases were removed and it lay next to the carton of stolen mutton (“A little something toward redistribution of wealth, I’m a skorrie-morrie,” Koos Kok had said), between bits of rickety furniture— two chairs, a coffee table with three legs, and the headboard of a bed. Four shabby suitcases were filled with clothes and documents. All this under a paint-flecked dirty canvas tarpaulin. The bakkie’s shocks were gone and the dirt road was very bumpy, but the mattress made it bearable. He lay curled in a fetal position in the cramped space. The rain was almost over, just the occasional shower against the tarp and the water dripping through holes.

He was thinking of the moment when the door had opened, thinking of his self-control, his victory of reason over instinct, suppressing the almost irresistible impulse, and he was filled with satisfaction. He felt like telling Miriam. Sometime he would phone her and tell her he was okay. She would be worried. But what tales he would have to tell Pakamile in the evenings. Koos Kok the Gri-qua. “don'’t you know about Adam Kok, Xhosa? He went to live with you guys.” And he heard the short version of that history.

The brandy had made him drowsy, and as they turned toward Loxton on the tar road between Rosedene and Slangfontein, the soft rocking of the Chevy lulled him to sleep. His last thoughts were of a river god. Otto Müller had told of the theory of two British scientists that animals deliberately behave unpredictably in order to survI've, the way the hare flees from the dog.

Does it run in a straight line? Of course not. If it runs in a straight line, it will be caught. So it zigzags. But not predictably. Now zigging, then zagging, the dog always guessing, never knowing. The British scientists called it protean behavior.

After the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will from a stone to a tree, from a tree to an animal, in order to confound his enemies.

The big, bad Xhosa biker had become the big, bad Xhosa passenger. Müller would have approved of the change of form to avoid the opponent.

His last conscious thought as he slipped into a deep, restful, satisfying sleep was of his friend Zatopek van Heerden, who would not believe that he had become the Proteus of his inherent nature.

Allison Healy had knocked, walked around the house, knocked again, but there was no life there. She leaned against her car in the driveway and waited. Perhaps Monica Kleintjes had gone out for a while. The photographer had come and left again, saying he could not wait, he had to get to the airport— Bobby Skinstad was arriving after the losing rugby tour to Europe. He took some pictures of the house, just in case. It was not an unusually large house, pretty garden, big trees, tranquilly unaware of the drama that surrounded the occupants.

She lit a cigarette. She was comfortable with her habit, ten a day, sometimes less. Nowadays there were few places where one could smoke. It was her appetite suppressant, her consolation prize, an escape to small oases through the day.

She had learned it from Nic.

Nic had seduced her while he was still married.

Nic said he had the hots for her from day one when she had walked into the SAPS office to introduce herself. He said he couldn'’t help it.

The affair had lasted sixteen months. An uncomplicated, chainsmoking man, a good man, basically, if you left his unfaithfulness to his wife out of the equation. Emotionally needy, not very attractive, an unexceptional lover. But then she was no great judge of that. five men, since that first time at University.

She and Nic in her flat once or twice a week. Why had she let it happen?

Because she was lonely.

A thousand acquaintances and not one bosom friend. This was the lot of the fat girl in a world of skinny standards. Or was that just her excuse?

The truth was that she could not find her place. She was a round peg in a world of square holes. She could not find a group where she felt at home among friends.

Not even with Nic.

It felt better after he left, lying naked alone on the bed, sexually sated, with music and a cigarette, than it did in the moment of passion, the peak of orgasm.

She did not love him. Just liked him a lot. She did still, but after the divorce and the guilt he carried around like a ball and chain, she had ended the relationship.

He still asked every now and then. “Could we start again? Just one more time?” She considered it. Sometimes seriously because of the desire to be held, to be caressed … He had liked her body. “You are sexy, Allison. Your breasts …” Maybe that was the thing, he had accepted her body. Because she could not change it, the curves were genetic, passed on from grandmother to mother to daughter in an unbroken succession, stout people, plump women, regardless of the best efforts of diets and exercise programs.

She crushed the cigarette into the grass with the tip of her shoe. The butt lay there like a reproach. She picked it up and threw it behind a shrub in a bed of daisies.

Where was Monica Kleintjes?

Her cell phone rang.

“It’s the boss, Allison. Where are you?”

“Newlands.”

“You had better get back. The minister is doing a press conference in fifteen minutes.”

“Which one?”

“Intelligence.”

“I’m on my way.”

During the design and equipping of the interview/interrogation room of the Presidential Intelligence Unit, Janina Mentz has asked why a table was necessary. Nobody could give her an answer. That is why there wasn'’t one. She had asked why the chairs should be hard and uncomfortable. Why the walls must be bare except for the one with the one-way mirror. She asked whether a stripped, unpleasant, chilly room yielded better results than a comfortable one. Nobody could answer that. “We are not running a police station” was her argument. So there were three easy chairs of the sort that Lewis Stores or Star Furnishers sold in the hundreds for people’s sitting rooms. They were upholstered in practical brown and treated with stain-resistant chemicals. The only difference was that these chairs could not be moved, so no one could prevent or delay entry to the room by pushing the chairs under the door handle. The chairs were bolted down in an intimate triangle. The floor was covered in wall-to-wall carpet, uniform beige, not khaki, not pumpkin, but exactly to Janina’s specification: beige. The microphone was concealed behind the fluorescent light in the ceiling, and the closed-circuit television was in the adjoining observation room, pointing its cyclopean eye through the one-way glass.

Janina stood by the camera and looked at the woman in one of the chairs. Interesting that everyone brought in chose the chair half turned away from the window. As if they could sense it.

Was this the result of too many television serials?

She was Miriam Nzululwazi, common-law wife of Thobela Mpayipheli.

What had Umzingeli seen in her?

She did not seem a cheerful type. She looked like someone who was chronically unhappy, the permanent lines of unhappi-ness around her mouth. No laugh lines.

She predicted that the woman would not cooperate. She expected her to be tense and hostile. Janina sighed. It had to be done.

Allison’s phone rang as she climbed the stairs.

“It’s Nic.”

Any news?”

“We don'’t have your Mrs. Nzululwazi.”

“Well, who has?”

“I don'’t know.”

“Can the intelligence services detain people? Without trial?”

“There are laws that are supposed to regulate them, but the intelligence people do as they please, because it is in the interest of the state and the people they work with are not the sort who run to the courts over irregular treatment.”

“And the drug angle?”

“I talked to Richter. He says Mpayipheli is well known. He worked for Orlando Arendse when he was Prince of the Cape Flats. No arrests, no record, but they were aware of him.”

“And Orlando Arendse was a dealer?”

“An importer and distributor. A wholesaler. Mpayipheli was a deterrent for dealers who would not pay. Or who did not reach their targets. It’s another kind of business, that.”

“Where do I get hold of Arendse?”

“Allison, these are dangerous people.”

“Nic …”

“I'’ll find out.”

“Thanks, Nic.”

“There’s something else.”

“Not now, Nic.”

“It’s not about us.”

“What is it?”

“Memo from the minister. Strong steps if they catch anyone leaking information on the Mpayipheli affair to the media. Full cooperation with our intelligence colleagues, big mobilization in the Northern Cape.”

“You were not supposed to tell me that.”

“No.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I want to see you, Allison.”

“Good-bye, Nic.”

“Please.” In a little-boy voice.

“Nic …”

“Please, just once.”

And she weakened in the face of… everything.

“Maybe.”

“Tonight?”

“No.”

“When then?”

“The weekend, Nic. Coffee somewhere.”

“Thanks.” And he sounded so sincere that she felt guilty.

It had been fifteen years since Miriam Nzululwazi’s terrible night in the Caledon Square cells, but the fear she felt then made the jump to the present, here to the interrogation room. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair, but her eyes were blind to the wall they faced. She remembered one woman in the cell kept screaming, screaming, a sound that penetrated marrow and bone, a never-ending lament. The red-faced policeman, who opened the cell door and cleared a way through the perspiring bodies to the screaming one with his truncheon, raised the blunt object high above his head.

She was seventeen, on her way home to the thrown-together wooden hut on an overpopulated dune at Khayalitsha, her week’s wages clasped in her handbag, on the way to the buses at the Parade when the mass of demonstrators blocked the road. A seething mass like a noisy pregnant python curling past the town hall, banners waving, whistling, chanting, toyi-toyiing, shouting, a swinging carnival of protest over pay in the clothing industry or something. She had joined in, as they were flowing in her direction, laughing at the young men cavorting like monkeys, and suddenly the police were there, the tear gas, the charge, the water cannon— the python had borne chaos.

They pushed her into the back of a big yellow lorry, pulled her out at the cells with the rest of the horde, shoved them into a cell, too full, nobody could sit and the screaming woman, wailing something about a child, she must go to her sick child, the red-faced white man threatening with the truncheon above his head, shouting, voice lost in the din, the arm dropping, again and again, and terror had overwhelmed Miriam— she needed to escape, she pushed against the others, through the screaming women till she reached the bars, put her hands through them, and there were more policemen shouting, too, faces wild, till someone pulled her back, the lamenting voice suddenly quiet.

She felt the same fear now, in this closed space, the locked door, the locking up without reason, without guilt. She jumped as the door opened. A white woman entered, went to sit opposite her.

“How can I convince you that we want to help Thobela?” Ja-nina Mentz used his first name deliberately.

“You can’t keep me here.” Miriam heard the fear in her own voice.

“Ma’am, these people are misusing him. They are putting him in unnecessary danger. They have lied and misled him. They are not good people.”

“I don'’t believe you. He was Thobela’s friend.”

“He was. Years ago. But he has gone bad. He wants to sell us out. Our country. He wants to hurt us and he is using Thobela.”

She could see uncertainty in Miriam’s face; she would capitalize on it. “We know Thobela is a good man. We know he was a hero of the Struggle. We know he wouldn'’t have got involved if he knew the whole story. We can sort this out and bring him home safely but we need your help.”

“My help?”

“You talked to the media… .”

“She also wanted to help. She was also on Thobela’s side.”

“They are manipulating you, ma’am.”

“And you?”

“How will the media be able to bring Thobela home? We can. With your help.”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“Do you expect Thobela to phone?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“If we could just give him a message.”

Miriam glanced sharply at Janina, at her eyes, her mouth, her hands.

“I don'’t trust you.”

Janina sighed. “Because I am white?”

“Yes. Because you are white.”

Captain Tiger Mazibuko could not get to sleep. He rolled about on the army bed. It was muggy in Kimberley not too hot, still overcast, but the humidity was high and the room poorly ventilated.

What was this hate that he felt for Mpayipheli?

The man was in the Struggle. This man had not sold out his comrades.

Where did this hate come from? It consumed him, it influenced his behavior; he had not treated Little Joe well. He had always had the anger, but it had never before affected his leadership.

Why?

This was just a poor middle-aged man who had a moment of glory a long time ago.

Why?

Outside there was a rumbling that grew louder and louder.

How was he supposed to sleep?

It was the Rooivalks. The windows shook in their frames, the deep bass note of the motors reverberated in his chest. Earlier it had been the trucks, departing one after another with single-minded purpose. Soldiers were being deployed to set up the roadblocks on the dirt and blacktop roads. The net was cast wider to catch a single fish.

He turned over again.

Did it matter where the hate came from? As long as he could control it. Channel it.

Any necessary force, Janina Mentz had said. In other words, shoot the fucker if you like.

Lord, he looked forward to it.

22.

The six-man team searched the house in Guguletu with professional skill. They took video footage and digital stills before they began so that everything could be replaced exactly where it had been. Then the methodical, laborious search began. They knew the hidey-holes of amateurs and professional frauds, no nook or cranny was left unsearched. Stethoscopes were used on walls and floors, powerful flashlights in the spaces between roof and ceiling. The master keys they had brought for cupboards and doors were not required. One of the six men was master of the inventory. He murmured into a palm-size tape recorder like a businessman dictating a letter.

It was a small house with not much inside. The search took 130 minutes. Then they were gone in the microbus they had arrived in. The master of inventory phoned his boss, Vincent Radebe.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing at all?” asked Radebe.

“No weapons, no drugs, no cash. A few bank statements. The usual documentation. Mpayipheli is taking his high school equivalency, there is correspondence and books. Magazines, cards— sentimental love notes to the woman in her clothes drawer. ‘From Thobela. To Miriam. I love you this, I love you that.’ Nothing else. Ordinary people.”

In the Ops Room Vincent shook his head. He had thought so.

“Oh, one other thing. A veggie garden out back. Very neat. Best tomatoes I have seen in years.”

The trick at a news conference is to phrase your questions in such a way as not to disclose to the other media the information you have.

That was why, after the minister had read the prepared statement on the stormy life and violent criminal times of Thobela Mpayipheli and had responded to a horde of questions from radio, newspaper, and television journalists almost without exception with “I am not in a position to answer that question, due to the sensitive nature of the operation,” Allison Healy asked: “Is anybody else connected with this operation being detained at the moment?”

And because the minister did not know, she hesitated. Then she gave an answer that would cover her if the opposite were true. “Not to my knowledge,” she said.

It was an answer she would later wish with all her heart never to have uttered.

They brought Miriam coffee and sandwiches in the interrogation room. She asked when they would let her go. The food bearer did not know. He said he would ask.

She did not eat or drink. She tried to overcome her fear. The walls suffocated her, the windowless room pressed down on her. Tonight it was she who needed to go to her child, tonight it was she who wanted to cry out with a high frightened voice, “Let me out.” She must go fetch Pakamile. Her child, her child. Her work. What were the bank people thinking? Did they think she was a criminal? Were they going to fire her? Would someone here go and explain to the bank people why they had come to fetch her?

She needed to get out.

She must get out.

And what about Thobela? Where was he now? Was it true what the white woman said, that he was in danger?

She had not asked for this.

Janina Mentz waited until everyone who had been resting was back before she gathered them around the table.

Then she told them almost the whole story. She did not mention that the director’s name was on the list, but she confessed that she had set up the operation from the start. She did not apologize for keeping them in the dark. She said they should understand why she had done it that way.

She described the meeting with the minister, the confirmation that Thobela Mpayipheli, code name Umzingeli, was a former MK operatI've, that he had received advanced training, that he was a dangerous opponent, and that it was of cardinal importance that he be stopped.

“We will waste no more time finding out who he was. We are going to focus on finding out who he is now. With his background, his behavior the past eighteen hours makes no sense. He has deliberately refrained from violence. At the airport he said, I quote, ‘I don'’t want to hurt anybody’ In the confrontation with two Reaction Unit members he said, ‘Look what you made me do.’ But at neither of these occasions did he give himself up. It doesn'’t make sense to me. Does anyone have an opinion here?”

She knew Rajkumar would have an opinion. He always had an opinion. “Escalation,” he said. “He’s not a moron. He knows if he shoots someone, things will escalate out of his control.”

Radebe said nothing, but she had her suspicions. So she drew him out. “Vincent?”

Radebe sat with his palms over his cheeks, fingertips on his temples, and his eyes on the big table. “I think not.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rajkumar irritably.

“Put everything together,” said Radebe. “He left the drug work. Of his own free will. Orlando Arendse said he just left without explanation. He deliberately chose an occupation without violence, probably at a much-reduced salary. He begins a relationship with a single mother, lives with her and her child, enrolls in a high school correspondence course, buys a farm. What does that tell us?”

“Smokescreen,” said Rajkumar. “What about all the money?”

“He worked for six years in the lucratI've drug industry. What could he spend his money on?”

“A thousand things. Wine, women, song, gambling.”

“No,” said Radebe.

“What do you think, Vincent?” asked Mentz softly.

“I think he began a new life.”

She watched the faces around the table. She wanted to test the support for Radebe. She saw none.

“Why not give himself up then, Vincent?” Rajkumar asked with a flamboyant gesture.

“I don'’t know,” said Radebe. “I just don'’t know.”

Rajkumar leaned back as if he had won the argument.

“A leopard doesn'’t change its spots,” said Janina. “He was out of the big game for ten years. But now he’s back. I think he is enjoying it.”

He awoke with a start, immediately aware that the El Camino was no longer moving and the engine was off. He heard voices.

“Koos Kok, get out.”

“Why?”

“We want to see if you are smuggling a man with a motorbike.”

Under the tarpaulin, he was blind to the action.

“Ja, okay, you got me. Have mercy, it’s just a dwarf on a fifty cc.”

Roadblock. His heart thundered in his ears, his breathing sounded very loud, he wondered if he had made any noise waking up.

“You always were a smooth-mouthed bastard, Koos. All your life.”

“And you are a ghwar, Sarge, even for a Dutchman.”

“Ghwar?

What’s a ghwar?”

“Just playing, Sarge, what’s with you today?”

“How many sheep have you got in the back, Koos?”

“I’m not in that business anymore, Sarge.”

“You lie, Koos Kok. You will be a sheep stealer till the day you die. Lift up that sail.”

How many men were there? Would he be able to … ?

“Leave the man, Gerber, we’ve got more important things to do.”

“He’s a thief. I bet you there’s meat here.”

Thobela Mpayipheli heard the man’s voice right by him, heard the rustle of a hand over the canvas. Lord, he was helpless, weaponless, he was lying down without a chance.

“You can look, it’s just my furniture,” said Koos Kok.

“Where are you moving to?”

“Bloemfontein. I’m looking for a proper job.”

“Ha! You lie like a dentist!”

“Let him go, Gerber, he’s blocking the road.”

“I tell you there are sheep here… .”

“Let him go.”

“Okay, Koos, get your skedonk out of the road.”

“But what about the dwarf with the motorbike? He can’t ride in the back there all the way.”

“Fuck off, Koos, before you get in trouble.”

“Okay, okay, Sarge. I’m going.” And the springs of the bakkie shifted as Koos Kok got in and then the engine fired and the big six-cylinder rumbled.

“Jissis, Koos, you must work on that exhaust.”

“Just as soon as I’ve dropped off the motorbike,” said Koos Kok, and he pulled away with spinning tires.

Quinn set the first issue of the Argus carefully before her.

fugitive BIKER WAS MK HERO

The fugitive motorcyclist now hunted nationally by intelligence agencies, the military and the South African Police Service was a top Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier who served the Struggle with great distinction, says a former SANDF colonel and comrade of Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli.

“Although I lost track of Thobela’s military career during the latter part of the struggle against apartheid, there is no doubt that he was an honorable soldier,” says Col. “Lucky” Luke Mahlape, who retired as second in command at First Infantry Battalion in Bloemfontein last year.

Col. Mahlape, now living in Hout Bay, called the Argus to set the record straight after news of Mr. Mpayipheli’s high-speed cross-country dash on a big BMW motorcycle caught local headlines earlier today.

They will have to change their tune now, she thought. If the minister does her part thoroughly.

He did not sleep again but shook on the mattress, the adrenaline dammed up, wondering if there would be more roadblocks, because his nerves could not take it. He wanted to get out from under the tarpaulin, wanted to get on the bike and have control— he could not be this helpless, wondering where they were, how long he had been sleeping.

It was practically dark where he lay, the hands of his watch invisible. He turned so he could lift the canvas, realized it had stopped raining, managed an opening. Twenty past twelve. Lowered the sail again.

Two hours on the road at an average of ninety, a hundred kilometers per hour. Richmond, that is where he guessed the roadblock had been. It was one of the danger spots they had discussed in the house when they had hunched over the map. He wanted to go to De Aar; Koos Kok said no, the army was there, let’s go through Merriman to Richmond and then take the back roads to Philipstown, and there you were through the worst, Petrusville, Luckhoff, Koffiefontein, perhaps some danger at Petrusburg because it was on the main route between Kimberley and Bloem-fontein, but after that it was a straight run, Dealesville, Bloemhof, Mafikeng, and Botswana and nobody would be the wiser.

He was not so sure. Kimberley was the straight line. And that is where they would wait for him. On a motorbike, not in the back of an El Camino.

And eventually decided the risk was too high.

The bakkie lost speed.

What now?

Stopped.

Lord.

“Xhosa,” said Koos Kok. “What?”

“don'’t worry. I have to fill up.” “Where?”

“Richmond. It’s just here.” Lord.

“Okay, fine.”

Koos Kok pulled away again.

He should have added: “No jokes about the man on the motorbike.”

But it probably wouldn'’t have made any difference.

23.

She was naive when she joined the Cape Times, an alumna of Rhodes University’s journalism program with stars in her eyes and a burning desire to live out her romance with words at Cosmo or Fair Lady but prepared to serve her apprenticeship at a daily. She trusted everyone, believed them, looked with wide-eyed wonder at the famous whom she came into contact with in her daily rounds.

But disillusionment followed, not suddenly or dramatically— the small realities slowly took over uninvited. The realization that people are an unreliable, dishonest, self-centered, self-absorbed, backstabbing, violent, sly species that lie, cheat, murder, rape, and steal, regardless of their status, nationality, or color. It was a gradual but often traumatic process for someone who wished only to see good and beauty.

Miriam Nzululwazi and Immanuel the shoeshine man had argued with such conviction that Mpayipheli was a good man. The minister had sketched another picture, the tragedy of the once trustworthy soldier gone bad. Very bad.

Where was the truth?

Will the real Thobela Mpayipheli please stand up.

The only way to find the truth, she knew, was to keep on digging. Keep asking questions and sift the wheat from the chaff.

Eventually Nic phoned in Orlando Arendse’s contact numbers. “You can try, but it won’t be easy,” he said.

She began phoning, one number after another.

“Orlando who?” was the reaction without exception. She would tell her story, in a breathless hurry before they broke the connection: it was about Thobela Mpayipheli, she just wanted background, she would protect her source.

“You have the wrong number, lady.”

“So what is the right number?”

Then the line would go dead and she would ring the next one. “My name is Allison Healy, I’m with the Cape Times, I would really like to talk to Mr. Orlando Arendse in absolute, guaranteed confidence… .”

“Where did you get this number?”

She was taken unaware; “from the police” was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. “I’m a reporter, it’s my job to find people, but, please, it’s about Thobela Mpayipheli… .”

“Sorry, wrong number.”

She rang all five numbers without success and slammed the flat of her hand down on the desk in frustration and then went to have a smoke on the sidewalk outside, short, angry drags on the cigarette. Maybe she should threaten. “If Arendse does not speak to me, I will put his name and occupation in every article I write about this. Take your choice.”

No. Better to try again.

When she pulled the notebook of numbers toward her, the phone rang.

“You want to speak to Mr. O?”

For a second she was lost. “Who?” she said, and then hurriedly, “Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”

“There’s a blue-whale skeleton in the museum. Be there at one o’clock.”

Before she could respond, the phone went dead.

The big whale hall was in twilight, dim blue light represented the deep, the taped sounds of the massive animals lent a surreal atmosphere as the colored couple, a young man and girl, wandered hand in hand from one display to the next. She did not consider them until they were right next to her, when the man said her name.

“Yes?” she answered.

“I have to search your handbag,” he said apologetically, and she stood rooted until insight caught up with her.

“Oh.” She handed over the bag.

“And I have to frisk you,” said the girl with a suggestion of a smile. She was nineteen or twenty, with long pitch-black hair, full lips, and tasteful but heavy makeup. “Please raise your arms.”

She reacted automatically, feeling the hands skillfully sliding over her body; then the girl stepped back.

“I’m going to keep this until after,” said the man, holding up her tape recorder. “Now please come with us.”

Outside, the sunlight was blinding. Ahead lay the Kompanje gardens, pigeons and fountains and squirrels. They walked wordlessly on either side of her, leading her to the tea garden, where two colored men sat, somewhat older with stern faces.

Heads were nodded, the two men stood, the girl indicated to Allison to sit. “Nice meeting you,” she said, and they were gone. Allison sat with her handbag pinched under her arm, feeling that she would not be surprised if Pierce Brosnan loomed up beside her and said, “Bond. James Bond.”

She waited. Nothing happened. Families and businesspeople sat at the other tables. Which of them were Orlando Arendse’s? She took out her cigarettes and put one to her lips.

“Allow me,” said a voice beside her, and a lighter appeared. She looked up. He looked like a schoolmaster in a tailored suit, blue shirt, red spotted bow tie, hair graying at the temples, but the deep brown face was etched with the lines of a hard life.

While she held her cigarette in the flame he said: “Please forgive the cloak-and-dagger. But we needed to be sure.” He sat down opposite her and said, “Rubens.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A game, Miss Healy Rubens would have painted you. I like Rubens.”

“He’s the one who liked fat women.” She was insulted.

“No,” said Arendse. “He is the one who painted perfect women.”

She was off-balance. “Mr. Arendse …”

He pulled out the chair opposite her. “You may call me Orlando. Or Uncle Orlando. I have a daughter your age.”

“Is she also in the …”

“Drug business? No, Miss Healy. My Julie is a copywriter at Ogilvie. Last year she won a Pendoring Award for her work with the Volkswagen Golf campaign.”

Allison blushed deeply. “Please excuse me. I had the wrong impression.”

“I know,” he said. “What will you drink?”

“Tea, please.”

He gestured to a waiter with the air of a man accustomed to giving orders. He ordered tea for her, coffee for himself. “One condition, Miss Healy. You will not mention my name.”

Her eyebrows asked the question.

“To throw my weight around in the newspaper is one way to draw the attention of the SAPS,” he said. “I can’t afford that.”

Are you really a drug baron?” He did not look like one. He did not speak like one.

“I always found that name amusing. Baron.”

Are you?”

“There was a time in my life, when I was young, I would have answered that with a long rationalization, Miss Healy. How I merely fulfilled the need of people to escape. That I was merely a businessman supplying a product greatly in demand. But with age comes realism. I am among other things a supplier. An illegal importer and distributor of banned substances. I am a parasite living off the weakness of man.” He spoke softly, without regret, merely stating the facts. Allison was amazed.

“But why?”

He smiled at her in a grandfatherly way at an obvious question. “Let us blame apartheid,” he said, and then laughed softly and privately and switched to a Cape Flats accent and nuances like speaking another language. “Crime of opportunity, męrrim, djy vat wat djy kan kry, verstaa’ djy.”

She shook her head in wonder. “The stories you could tell,” she said.

“One day, in my memoirs. But let us talk about the man of the moment, Miss Healy. What do you want to know about Tiny Mpayipheli?”

She opened her notebook. She explained about the minister’s declaration, the allegations that Mpayipheli was a fallen hero, misusing his skill. She was interrupted by the arrival of the tea and coffee. He asked her if she took milk, poured for her. He put milk and three spoons of sugar with his, sipped it.

“The spooks came to me last night. Asking questions with that attitude: ‘we have the power and the right.’ It is interesting to me, the way everything changes but nothing changes. Instead of chasing the Nigerians that are taking over here. How is one supposed to make a living? Nevertheless, it made me think, last night and this morning, when Tiny was in the news. I thought a lot about him. In my line you see all kinds. You learn to recognize people for what they are, not for what they are trying to show you. And Tiny … I knew he was different from the moment he walked in my door. I knew he was just passing through. It was as if he was there, but not his spirit. For years I thought it was because he was a Xhosa in a colored people’s world, a fish out of water. But now I know that was not so. He was never an enforcer at heart. He is a warrior. A fighter. Three hundred years ago he would have been the one in front, charging the enemy with spear and shield, the one who reached the lines while his comrades fell around him, the one who kept stabbing until there was only blood and sweat and death.”

He came back to reality. “I am a romantic at heart, my dear, you must excuse me.”

“Was he violent?”

“Now there’s a question.

What is ‘violent’? We are all violent, as a species. It simmers just below the surface like a volcano. The lucky ones go through their entire lives without an eruption.”

“Was Thobela Mpayipheli more inclined to violence than the average person?”

“What are we trying to prove here?” he said with some anger.

“Have you seen today’s Argus?

”

“Yes. They say he is a war hero.”

“Mr. Arendse …”

“Orlando.”

“Orlando, the intelligence services are pursuing this man over the length and breadth of the country. If he is a violent and criminal man, it places a whole different perspective on what they are doing. And how they are doing it. The public needs to know.”

Orlando Arendse grimaced until the lines of his face creased deeply.

“That is my problem with the media, Miss Healy You want to press people into packages, that is all there is time and space for. Labels. But you can’t label people. We are not all good or bad. There is a bit of both in all of us. No. There is a lot of both in all of us.”

“But we don'’t all become murderers or rapists.”

“Granted.” He took a packet of sugar in his fingers, twirling it around and around. “He never sought violence. You must understand, he was big. Six foot five. If you are a dealer on the Flats and this big black bugger walks in the door and looks you in the eye, you see your future and it doesn'’t look good. Violence is the last thing you want to provoke. He carried the threat of violence in him.”

“Did he resort to violence sometimes?”

“Lord, you won’t give up until you have the answer, the sensation you are looking for.”

She shook her head, but he continued before she could protest.

“Yes, sometimes he did use violence. What do you expect, in my line of business? But remember, he was provoked. In the days before the Nigerians started messing us around, it was the Russians who tried to get control of the trade. And they were racist. Tiny worked a couple of them over right into intensive care. I wasn'’t there, but the men told me, whispering with big eyes as if they had seen something otherworldly. The intensity was awesome. Raw. What frightened them most— they said he enjoyed it. It was as if a light shone out from him.”

She scribbled in her notebook, hurrying to keep up.

“But if you want to define him like that, you will be making a mistake. He has a lot of good in him. One bad winter we were in the city late at night, other side of Strand Street in the red-light district, collecting protection money, and he was watching the street kids. And then he went over and gathered them up— there must have been twenty or thirty— and took them to the Spur Steakhouse and told the management it was their birthday, all of them and each one must get a plate of food and a sparkler and the waiters must sing ‘Happy Birthday’ That was a party for you.”

She glanced up from her writing. “He made a choice in those days. He came to work for you. I can’t understand why an MK veteran would go to work for a drug baron.”

“That is because you were never an MK veteran out of work in the new South Africa.”

“Touché.”

“If you committed your life to the Struggle and won, you’d expect some kind of reward. It’s human, an inherent expectation. Freedom is an ephemeral reward. You can’t grasp it in your hand. One morning you wake up and you are free. But your township is just as much a ghetto as yesterday, you are just as poor, your people are as burdened as before. You can’t eat freedom. You can’t buy a house or a car with it.”

He took a big swallow of coffee. “Madiba was Moses and he led us to the Promised Land, but there was no milk or honey.”

He put his cup down.

“Or something like that.” And he smiled gently. “I don'’t know what to say to you. You are looking for the real Tiny, and I don'’t think anyone knows who that is. What I can say is that in the years he worked for me, he was never late, he was never sick; he did not drink or sample the produce of the trade. Women? Tiny is a man. He had his needs. And the girls were mad about him, the young ones— seventeen, eighteen— they ran after him, pursued him with open desire. But there was never any trouble. I can tell you his body was in the work, but his mind was elsewhere.”

Orlando Arendse shook his head in recall. “Let me tell the thing with the French. One day we were walking in the city, down St. George’s, and there were these tourists, French, standing with a map and wondering, and they called me over in their bad English and they were looking for a place. The next thing big, black Tiny starts babbling in French like you won’t believe. There in front of my eyes he became another person, different body different eyes, another language, another land. Suddenly he was alive, his body and mind were in one place together. He was alive.”

The material in his memory bank made him laugh. “You should have seen their faces, those tourists nearly hugged him, they chattered like starlings. And when we walked away I asked him, ‘What was that?’ And he said, ‘My previous life’— that’s all, ‘My previous life’— but he said it with longing that I can still feel today, and that is when I realized I didn’'t know him. I would never know him. Some more tea?”

“Thank you,” she said, and he did the honors. “And then he left your service?”

Orlando Arendse drank the last of his coffee. “Tiny and I … There was respect. We looked each other in the eye, and let me tell you it doesn'’t happen often in my business. Part of that respect was that we both knew the day would come.”

“Why did he leave?”

“Why? Because the time had come, that is probably the simplest answer, but not the whole truth. The thing is: I loaned him out, just before he resigned. Long story. Just call it business, a transaction. There was a shooting and a fight. Tiny landed in the hospital. When he came out, he said he was finished.”

“Loaned out?”

“I’m honor-bound, my dear. You will have to ask Van Heerden.”

“Van Heerden?”

“Zatopek van Heerden. Former policeman, former private eye, now he’s like a professor of psychology at the University.”

“The University of Cape Town?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, verstaa’ djy,” said Orlando Arendse with a twinkle in his eye, and beckoned the waiter to bring the check.

Vincent Radebe closed the door of the interview room behind him. Miriam Nzululwazi stood by the one-way window, a deep frown on her face.

“When can I go home?” she asked in Xhosa.

“Won’t you sit down, sister.” Soft, sympathetic, serious.

“don'’t ‘sister’ me.”

“I understand.”

“You understand nothing. What have I done? Why are you keeping me here?”

“To protect you and Thobela.”

“You lie. You are a black man and you lie to your own people.”

Radebe sat down. “Please, ma’am, let us talk. Please.”

She turned her back on him.

“Ma’am, of all the people here, I am about the only one who thinks that Thobela is a good man. I think I understand what happened. I am on your side. There must be some way I can make you believe that.”

“There is. Let me go. I am going to lose my job. I have to look after my child. I am not a criminal. I never did anything to anyone. Let me go.”

“You won’t lose your job. I promise you.”

“How will you manage that?”

“I will talk to the bank. Explain to them.”

She turned around. “How can I believe you?”

“I am telling you. I am on your side.”

“That is exactly what the white woman said.”

Mentz is right, he thought. It was not easy. He had offered to come talk to her. He was uneasy that she was there, that she was being detained. His thoughts were with her, his empathy, but the damage had already been done. He let the silence grow.

She gave him an opening: “What can I say to you? What can I do so you will let me go?”

“There are two things. This morning you spoke to the newspapers. …”

“What did you expect me to do? They come to my work. They also say they are on my side.”

“It was not wrong. Just dangerous. They write crazy things. We—”

“You are afraid they will write the truth.”

He suppressed his frustration, kept his head cool. “Ma’am, Thobela Mpayipheli is out there somewhere with a lot of information that a few people want very badly. Some of them will do anything to stop him. The more the papers write, the more dangerous the things that they will do. Is that what you want?”

“I won’t talk to them again. Is that what you want?”

“Yes, that is what I want.”

“What else?”

“We need to know why he has not given himself up yet.”

“That you must ask him yourself.” Because if everything was as they said, then she did not understand, either.

“We would dearly love to. We hoped you would help us to get him to understand.”

“How can I? I don'’t know what he thinks. I don'’t know what happened.”

“But you know him.”

“He went to help a friend, that is all I know.”

“What did he say before he left?”

“I have already told the colored man who came to my house. Why must I say it again? There is nothing more. Nothing. I will keep quiet, I will talk to nobody, I swear it to you, but you must let me go now.”

He saw she was close to breaking, he knew she was telling the truth. He wanted to reach out and comfort her. He also knew she would not tolerate it. Radebe stood. “You are right, ma’am,” he said. “I will see to it.”

24.

He had to stretch his legs, the cramps were creeping up on him, and his shoulder throbbed. The nest under the tarpaulin was too small now, too hot, too dusty. The shuddering over the dirt roads— how far still to go?— he needed air, to get out, it was going too slowly, the hours disappearing in the monotonous drone of the Chevy. Every time Koos Kok reduced speed he thought they had arrived, but it was just another turn, another connection. His impatience and discomfort were nearly irrepressible, and then the Griqua stopped and lifted the sail with a theatrical gesture and said, “The road is clear, Xhosa, laat jou voete raas.”

He was blinded by the sudden midday sun. He straightened stiffly, allowing his eyes to adjust. The landscape was different, less Karoo. He saw grass veld, hills, a town in the distance.

“That’s Philipstown.” Koos Kok followed his gaze.

The road stretched out before them, directly north.

They wrestled the GS off the El Camino, using two planks as a ramp that bent deeply under the weight, but it was easier than the loading. They worked hurriedly, worried about the possibility of passing traffic.

“You must wait until sunset,” said Koos Kok.

“There’s no time.”

The GS stood ready on its stand; Thobela pulled on the rider’s suit, opened the sports bag, and counted out some notes, offering them to Koos Kok.

“I don'’t want your money. You paid for the petrol already.”

“I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing. You gave me the music.”

“What music?”

“I am going to write a song about you.”

“Is that why you helped me?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“You have two choices in life, Xhosa. You can be a victim. Or not.” His smile was barely discernible.

“Oh.”

“You will understand one day.”

He hesitated a moment and then pushed the cash into Kok’s top pocket. “Take this for wear and tear,” he said, handing over a couple of hundred rand.

“Ride like the wind, Xhosa.”

“Go well, Griqua.”

They stood facing each other uncomfortably. Then he put out his hand to Koos Kok. “Thank you.”

The Griqua shook his hand, smiled with a big gap-toothed smile.

He put the bag in the side case, pushed his hands into the gloves, and mounted. Pushed the starter. The GS hesitated a second before it caught and then he raised his hand and rode, accelerating gradually through the gears, giving the engine time to warm up. It felt good, it felt right, because he was in control again; on the road, fourth, fifth, sixth, 140 kilometers per hour, he shifted into position, found the right angle with most of his torso behind the windshield, bent slightly forward, and then let the needle creep up and looked in the rearview mirror to see that Koos Kok and the El Camino had become very small behind him in the road.

The digital clock read 15:06 and he made some calculations, visualizing the road map in his mind, two hundred kilometers of blacktop to Petrusburg— that was the dangerous part, in daylight on the R48— but it was a quiet road. Petrusburg by half past four, five o’clock. Refuel and if he was reported, then there was the network of dirt roads to the north, too many for them to patrol, and he would have choices, to go through Dealesville or Boshof, and his choices would multiply and by then it would be dark and if all went well, he could cross the border at Mafikeng before midnight. Then he would be away, safe, and he would phone Miriam from Lobatse, tell her he was safe, regardless of what they said over the radio.

But first he had to pass Petrusville and cross the Orange river.

If he were setting up a roadblock, it would be at the Big river, as Koos Kok called it. Close the bridge. There were no other options according to the map, unless you were willing to chance your luck in Orania.

The thought made him smile.

Odd country, this.

What would the Boers of Orania think if he pulled up in a cloud of dust and said, “I am Thobela Mpayipheli, chaps, and the ANC government would love to get their hands on me”? Would it be a case of “if you are against the government, you are with us”? Probably not.

He had to pass a sheep lorry, slowing down and using his blinkers like a law-abiding citizen, sped up again, leaning the bike into the turns where the road twisted between the hills, aware of the landscape. Beautiful country, this. Colorful. That is the difference, the major difference between this landscape and the Karoo. More color, as if God’s palette was increasingly used up on the way south. Here the green was greener, the ridges browner, the grass more yellow, the sky more blue.

Color had messed up this land. The difference in color.

The road grew straight again, a black ribbon stretching out ahead, grass veld and thorn bush. Cumulus clouds in line, a war host marching across the heavens. This was the face of Africa. Unmistakable.

Zatopek van Heerden said it was not color, it was genes. Van Heerden was big on genes. Genes that caused the Boers of Orania to pull into the defensive laager. Van Heerden said racism is inherent, the human urge to protect his genes, to seek out his own so the genes could propagate.

Thobela had argued because Van Heerden’s philosophy was too empty. Too damning. Too easy.

“So, I can do as I please and shrug my shoulders and say, ‘It’s genes’?”

“You must differentiate between genetic programming and morality, Thobela.”

“I don'’t know what you mean.”

Van Heerden had bowed his shoulders as if the weight of knowledge were too heavy to bear.

“There is no easy way to explain it.”

“That is usually the case with absolute drivel.”

Laughing: “That’s fucking true. But not in this case. The problem is that most people won’t accept the big truths. You should see them fighting in the letters page of the Burger over evolution. And not just here. In America they don'’t want to allow evolution into the classroom even. In the twenty-first century. The evidence is overwhelming, but they fight to the bitter end.”

Van Heerden said accepting evolution was the first step. People are formed through natural selection, their bodies and thoughts and behavior. Programmed. For one thing alone: the survival of the species. The preservation of the gene pool. The white man had laid down evidence before him in one motivated layer after another, but eventually, though Thobela had conceded that there was some truth in what Van Heerden said, it could not be the whole truth. He knew that, he felt it in his bones. What of God, what of love, what of all the strange, wonderful things that people were capable of, things we do and experience and think?

Van Heerden waved his hand and said, “Let’s forget about it.”

And he had said: “You know, whitey it sounds like the new excuse to me. All the great troubles of the world have been done in the name of one or other excuse. Christianization, colonialism, herrenvolk, communism, apartheid, democracy, and now evolution. Or is it genetics? Excuses, just another reason to do as we wish. I am tired of it all. Finished with that. I am tired of my own excuses and the excuses of other people. I am taking responsibility for what I do now. Without excuse. I have choices; you have choices. About how we will live. That’s all. That’s all we can choose. Fuck excuses. live right, or get lost.”

He spoke with fervor and conviction. He had been loud, and heads turned in the coffee shop where they sat, but he didn’'t care. And now, in this desolate piece of Africa at 160 kilometers per hour, he knew he was right and it filled him with elation for what he must do. Not just the thing in the bag, but afterward. To live a life of responsibility, a life that said if you want change, start here, inside yourself.

“Ma’am, let us let her go.” Vincent Radebe sat next to Janina Mentz, speaking softly to keep the potential for conflict between them low-key. He knew she was keeping an eye on him, knew she had doubts about his attitude and his support for her. But he had to do what he must do.

She sat at her laptop at the big table. She finished typing but did not turn to him.

“Ai, Vincent,” she said.

“She knows nothing. She can’t add value,” he said.

“But she can do damage.”

“Ma’am, she understands she must not talk to the media.”

Janina put her hand on Vincent Radebe’s arm compassionately. “It is good that you are part of the team, Vincent. You bring balance. I respect and value your contribution. And your honesty.”

He had not expected that. “Can I go and tell her?”

“Let me give you a scenario to think over. We drop Mrs. Nzu-lulwazi at her house. She fetches her child, and a photographer from the Cape Times photographs them standing hand in hand in front of their little house. Tomorrow the picture is on the front page. With the caption ‘Mother and child wait anxiously for fugitive’s return’— or something like that. Do we need that? While the minister works to explain Mpayipheli’s true colors to the media? She has already done damage. You heard the reporter on the radio. ‘His common-law wife says he is a good man.’ ”

He could see what she meant.

“In any case, Vincent, what guarantee do you have that she will not talk to the media again? What happens when they start pulling out checkbooks?”

“I have summed her up differently” he said.

She nodded in thought. “Perhaps you are in a better position to make this decision, Vincent.”

“Ma’am?”

“The decision is yours.”

“You mean I can decide if she can go or not?”

“Yes, Vincent, just you. But you must bear the responsibility. And the consequences.”

He looked at her, searching for clues in her eyes, suddenly wary.

“I will have to think about it,” he said.

“That is the right thing to do.”

He slowed down when he saw Petrusville. He had hoped the road would bypass the town, but it ran directly through. Koos Kok was right, it would have been better at night, but there was no helping it now, he must gut it out. He checked the fuel meter— still over half. Keeping the needle on sixty, he rode into town, one- and two-story buildings, bleached signboards, Old World architecture. From the corner of his eye he could see black faces from the lower town turning, staring. He was colorless, without identity under the helmet, thankfully. He stopped at the four-way stop. A car pulled up alongside him, a woman, fat and forty. She stared at the bike, at him. He kept his eyes forward, pulled away, excruciatingly aware of the attention. There was a sprinkling of activity in the hot, sleepy afternoon. Pedestrians. Cars, bakkies, bicycles. He rode with his ears pricked for alarm signals, his back tense as if waiting for a bullet. Kept to sixty, revs low, trying not to make a racket, to be invisible, something impossible on this vehicle. He passed houses and children by the road, a few fingers pointed— did they recognize him, or was it the motorbike? Town boundary, a sign saying he could ride 120 again. He accelerated slowly, uncertain, keeping watch in the rearview mirror.

Nothing.

Was it possible?

A car beside the road. White people under a thorn tree, a thermos of coffee on the concrete table. They waved. He lifted his left hand.

Signboard saying Vanderkloof Dam to the right.

He continued straight on.

Somewhere up ahead was the turnoff to Luckhoff— and the bridge over the Orange.

Trouble must be waiting there.

Fourteen kilometers south of Koffiefontein the official of the Free State Traffic Authority sat at his speed trap.

“Department of Psychology,” said the woman’s voice over the phone.

“Hi. May I speak to Mr. Van Heerden?”

“You mean Dr. Van Heerden?”

“Oh. Zatopek van Heerden?”

“I’m afraid Dr. Van Heerden isn'’t in. May I take a message?”

“This is Allison Healy of the Cape Times. Do you know how I can get hold of him?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to provide his home number.”

“Does he have a cell number?”

The woman laughed. “Dr. Van Heerden is not keen on cell phones, I’m afraid.”

“May I leave my number? Will he call me back?”

“He will be in again tomorrow.”

Thobela Mpayipheli knew the bridge must be within a kilometer or two, according to the map.

A Volkswagen Kombi approached from the front. He watched the driver, looking for signs of blockades, the law, or soldiers.

Nothing.

He saw the green seam of the river, knew the crossing was just ahead, but there was no sign of activity.

Was he far enough east? Was that why they were not here?

The road straightened and the bridge came into view, two white railings, double lane, open, clear.

He accelerated, leaving the Northern Cape, looked down at the brown waters flowing strongly, the midday sun reflecting brightly off the ripples. The sluices of the dam must be open, he surmised. Probably because of the rain. Over the bridge, over the Orange.

Free State.

Relief flooded through him. They had slipped up.

What about… His head jerked up to the sky, searching for the specks of helicopter, ears straining for their rumble above the noise of the motorbike.

Nothing.

Had the ride in the back of the El Camino slipped him through the net?

It didn’'t matter. The initiative was with him now; he had the lead and the advantage.

He must use it.

He used the torque with purpose, felt the power flow to the rear wheel, how the steering rod got lighter.

He wanted to laugh.

Fucking beautiful German machine.

Fourteen kilometers south of Koffiefontein the official of the Free State Traffic Authority sat reading.

The white patrol car was behind the thorn trees that grew by the dry wash, his canvas chair positioned so that he could see the reading on the Gatsometer and the road stretching out to the south. The book was balanced on his lap.

So far it was an average day. Two minibus taxis for speeding, three lorries from Gauteng for lesser offenses. They thought if they came through here, avoiding the main routes, they could overload or get away with poor tires, but they were wrong. He was not over enthusiastic. He enjoyed his work, especially the part that allowed him to sit in the shade of an acacia on a perfect summer’s day, listen to the birds chattering, and read Ed McBain. But when it came to enforcing traffic ordinances, he was probably a tad stricter with vehicles from other provinces.

He had pulled over a few farmers in their bakkies. One didn’'t have his driver’s license with him, but you couldn'’t just write a ticket for these gentlemen, they had influence. You gave them a warning.

Two tourists, Danes, had stopped to ask directions.

An average day.

He checked his watch again. At quarter to five he would start rolling up the wires of the Gatsometer. Not a minute later.

He looked up the road. No traffic. His eyes dropped back to the book. Some of his colleagues from other towns listened to the radio. When there were two officers stationed together, they talked rubbish from morning to night, but he preferred this.

Alone, just him and McBain’s characters, Carella and Hawes and the big black cop, Brown and Oliver Weeks and their things.

An average day.

25.

Everything happened at once. The director walked into the Ops Room and everyone was astounded, Janina Mentz’s cell phone rang, and Quinn, headphones on his ears, suddenly started making wild gestures to get her attention.

She took the call because she could see from the little screen who it was.

“It’s Tiger,” said Mazibuko. “I am awake.”

“Captain, I will phone you right back,” she said, and cut the connection. “What have you got, Rudewaan?” she asked Quinn.

“Johnny Kleintjes’s house number. We relayed it here.”

“Yes?”

“It’s ringing. Continuously. Every few minutes they phone again.”

“Where is Monica Kleintjes? Bring her down.”

“In my office. Is she going to answer?”

A nervous question because of the director’s presence, the figure at the margins, the big boss they almost never saw. They couldn'’t afford a messup now.

Mentz’s voice was reassuring. “Perhaps it’s nothing. Maybe it’s the media. Even if it is the people in Lusaka— by now they must know something is going on, with all the media coverage.”

Quinn nodded to one of his people to go fetch Monica Kleintjes.

She turned to the director and stood up. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“Afternoon, everyone,” the small Zulu said, smiling like a politician on election day. “don'’t stand up, Janina. I know you are busy.” He went and stood by her. “I have a message from the minister. So I thought I would come down. To show my solidarity.”

“Thank you, sir. We appreciate it.”

“The minister has asked the Department of Defence to track down people who worked with Mpayipheli in the old days and, shall we say, do not have fond memories of him.”

“She is a woman of initiative, sir.”

“That she is, Janina.”

“And did she find someone?”

“She did. A brigadier in Pretoria. Lucas Morape. They trained together in Russia, and he describes our fugitive as, I quote, ‘an aggressive troublemaker, perhaps a psychopath, who was a continuous embarrassment to his comrades and the Movement.’ ”

“That is good news, indeed, sir. From a public relations angle, of course.”

“It is. In the course of the afternoon the brigadier will release a short report to the media.” He prepared to leave. “That is all I have at the moment, Janina. I won’t disturb you further.”

“I truly appreciate it, sir. But may I ask one more favor? Could you pass on this news to Radebe personally?”

“Is he somewhat skeptical, Janina?”

“One could say that, sir.”

The director turned and walked over to where Radebe was sitting at the communication banks. Mentz concentrated on her cell phone, getting Mazibuko on the air.

“You must know we are working with a bunch of morons here,” said Tiger Mazibuko.

“How so?”

“Jissis,” he said. “So many egos. So much politicking. Free State Command wants to run the show and so does Northern Cape. They don'’t even have enough radios for all the roadblocks, and Groblershoop is not covered, because the trucks have broken down.”

“Slow down, Tiger. Where are you?”

“Anti-Aircraft School. Kimberley”

“Is that where the Rooivalks are?”

“Yes. They are waiting in a row here. My people, too.”

“Tiger, according to my information, Free State Command is covering the N8 from Bloemfontein to Perdeberg, and Northern Cape is responsible for the rest, up to Groblershoop. With the police as backup.”