Heart of the Hunter

“In theory.”

“What do you mean, ‘in theory’?”

“In the Free State things look okay: they have fourteen roadblocks and things look right on the map. But between us and Groblershoop there are about twenty roads that cross the N8. The little colonel here says they have only sixteen roadblocks, and four of them have not reported back yet because they haven’t received radios yet, or they don'’t work.”

“Do you include the police in that?”

“The police are using their own network. The coordination stinks.”

“You would expect that, Tiger. This thing came down on them out of the blue.”

“They are going to let the fucker slip through, ma’am.”

“Captain …”

“Sorry.”

She saw Monica Kleintjes coming in with an urgent limp, Quinn’s assistant behind her.

“Let me see what I can do, Tiger. I’ll phone you back.”

She stood up and went to Quinn. “Are they still calling?”

“Not at the moment.”

“How are you feeling, Monica?”

“Scared.”

“There is nothing to be afraid of. Our people are already in Lusaka, and we will handle this thing.”

The colored woman looked at her with hope.

“If it is the media, say you don'’t know what they are talking about. If it is the people from Lusaka, tell them the truth. With one exception: tell them you are at home. don'’t tell them we brought you here. Understand?”

“I must say I gave the hard drive to Tiny?”

“The whole truth. Tell them why you gave it to him, when you gave it to him, everything. If they ask you if it is the man who is so much in the news, say yes. Keep to the truth. If they ask you if we have contacted you, say yes, there was a man who came to question you. Admit you told him everything. If they ask how we knew, tell them you suspect your phone was tapped. Keep to the truth. Just don'’t tell them you are here.”

“But my father …”

“They are after the data, Monica. Never forget that. Your father is safe as long as that is the case. And moreover, we have teams in Lusaka. Everything is under control.”

Monica’s eyes stayed wide, but she nodded.

You are not your father’s child, thought Janina. There was nothing of Johnny Kleintjes’s quiet strength. Perhaps that will work in our favor.

“Ma’am,” said Rahjev Rajkumar, “something is brewing.”

She looked at the Indian tapping a fat finger on the computer screen of one of his assistants.

“I’m coming,” she said. “Quinn, let Monica answer if they phone again.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

As she moved toward Rajkumar, she could see the director and Radebe deep in conversation in the corner at the radio panel. She could see Radebe talking fervently waving his hands, the director small and defenseless against the onslaught, but she could not hear a single word. Let him see what she had to deal with. Let him see how she was undermined. Then there would be no trouble when she transferred Vincent Radebe to lighter duties.

The Indian shifted his considerable bulk to make room for her. On the screen was the BMW motorcycle website.

“Look at this,” he said. “We have been monitoring them all afternoon.”

She read. Messages, one after another.

This is going to be better than the annual gathering We are four guys, leaving at 13:00. See you in Kimberley

— John S., Johannesburg

I’m leaving now, will take the N₃ to Bethlehem, then Bloemfontein and on to Kimberley. I’m on a red K₁₂₀₀ RS. If there’s anybody who wants to come along for the ride, just fall in behind me. If you can keep up, of course.

— Peter Strauss, Durban

See you at Pietermaritzburg, Peter. We are on two R_1150s, a F 650 and a new RT.

— Dasher, PM

We are three guys on 1150 GSs, just like the Big Bad Biker. We will meet you at the Big Hole, will keep the beers cold, it’s just over the hill for us.

— Johan Wasserman, Klerksdorp

“How many are there?” asked Janina.

“Twenty-two messages,” said Rajkumar’s assistant. “More than seventy bikers who say they are on the way.”

“That doesn'’t bother me.”

Rajkumar and his assistant looked at her questioningly.

“It’s just a lot of men looking for an excuse to drink,” she said. “Seventy? What are they going to do? Carry out a coup d’état at Northern Cape Command with their scooters?”

“Department of Psychology.”

“This is Allison Healy of the

Cape Times

again. I wonder if—”

“I told you, Dr. Van Heerden will be in tomorrow.”

“You did. But I was wondering if you could call him at home and tell him it is in connection with Thobela Mpayipheli.”

“Who?”

“Thobela Mpayipheli. Dr. Van Heerden knows him well. The man is in trouble, and if you could call him and tell him, I can leave you my number.”

“Dr. Van Heerden does not like to be disturbed at home.”

“Please.”

There was silence on the end, followed by a dramatic sigh. “What is your number?” She gave it. “And your name again?”

The Reaction Unit’s members sat around in groups defined by the shade of the acacias next to the hard-baked red and white parade ground of the Anti-Aircraft School, between the vehicles and boxes. The row of trees provided ever shifting shelter from the merciless sun and dominating heat of thirty-four degrees Celsius. Two tents had been erected— just the roof sections, like enormous umbrellas. Shirts were off, torsos glistening with sweat, weapons were being cleaned, a few of Team Alpha lay sleeping, others chatted, here and there a muffled laugh. A radio was playing.

As Captain Tiger Mazibuko approached, he heard them fall silent as a news bulletin was announced. He checked his watch. Where had the day gone?

Four O’clock on Diamond City Radio and here is the news, read by René Grobbelaar. Kimberly is the focal point of a countrywide search for MK veteran Thobela Mpayipheli, who evaded law enforcers yesterday evening in Cape Town on a stolen motorcycle. According to Inspector Tappe Terblanche, local liaison officer for the police, a joint operation between the army and SAPS has been launched to intercept the fugitive. He is probably somewhere in the Northern Cape. A similar operation is under way in the Free State.

During a news conference earlier today the minister of intelligence revealed that Mpayipheli, who is armed and considered dangerous, is in possession of extremely sensitive classified information that he has illegally obtained. In reply to a question on the nature of the information, the minister replied that it was not in the interest of national security to reveal details.

Members of the public who have had contact with Mpayipheli, or who have information that could lead to his arrest, are advised to call the following toll-free number.…

With my luck, thought Tiger Mazibuko, some idiot will force Mpayipheli off the road with his souped-up Opel and demand the reward, too.

He sat down beside Lieutenant Penrose. “Is Bravo ready?”

“When the signal comes, we can be rolling in five minutes, Captain.”

“If the signal comes.” He motioned toward the building behind him where the operation was coordinated. “This lot of monkeys couldn'’t find a turd in a toilet.”

The lieutenant laughed. “We will get him, Captain. You’'ll see.”

Fourteen kilometers south of Koffiefontein the Gatsometer gave its fine electronic scream and the officer closed the book in one flowing motion, checked the speed reading, stood up, and walked into the road. It was a white Mercedes-Benz, six or seven years old. He held up his hand and the car immediately began to brake, stopping just next to him. He walked around to the driver’s side.

“Afternoon, Mr. Franzen,” he greeted the driver.

“You got me again,” said the farmer.

“A hundred and thirty-two, Mr. Franzen.”

“I was in a bit of a hurry. The kids forgot half their stuff on the farm and tomorrow is rugby practice. You know how it is.”

“Speed kills, Mr. Franzen.”

“I know, I know. It’s a terrible thing.”

“We’ll look the other way this time, but you must please respect the speed limit, Mr. Franzen.”

“I promise you it won’t happen again.”

“You can go.”

“Thank you. Cheers, boet.”

He doesn'’t even know my name, the officer thought. Until I write him a ticket.

Quinn motioned for everyone to keep quiet before he allowed Monica Kleintjes to answer. She had a headset on, earphones and microphone, and then he pressed the button and nodded to her.

“Monica Kleintjes,” she said in a shaky voice.

“You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady.” Lusaka. The same unaccented voice of the first call.

“Please,” she said.

“You gave the drive to the guy on the motorbike?”

“Yes, I—”

“That was a very stupid thing to do, Monica.”

“I had no choice. I … I couldn'’t do it on my own.”

“Oh, no, Monica. You were just plain stupid. And now we have a real problem.”

“I’m sorry. Please …”

“How did the spooks find out, Monica?”

“They … the phone. It was tapped.”

“That’s what we thought. And they’re listening right now.”

“No.”

“Of course they are. They are probably standing right next to you.”

“What are you going to do?”

The voice was still calm. “Unlike you, my dear, we are sticking to the original deal. With maybe a few codicils. You have forty-eight of the seventy-two hours left. If the drive isn'’t here by then, we will kill your father. If we see anything that looks like an agent in Lusaka, we will kill your father. If the drive gets here and it is more bullshit, we will kill your father.”

Monica Kleintjes’s body jerked slightly. “Please,” she said despairingly.

“You should know, Monica, that your daddy is not a nice man. He talked to us— with a little encouragement, of course. We know he is working with the intelligence people. We know he tried to palm off bullshit data. That’s why we ordered the real thing. So here’s the deal for you and your friends from Presidential Intelligence: if the motorbike man does not make it, we kill Kleintjes. And we’ll give the bullshit drives and the whole story of how they abused a pensioner to the press. Can you imagine the headlines, Monica? Can you?”

She was crying now, her shoulders shaking, her mouth forming words that could not escape her lips.

And then everyone realized the connection was broken, and the director was looking at Janina Mentz with a strange expression on his face.

26.

He was doing nearly 180 when he saw the double tubes of the Gatsometer on the road in front of him and grabbed a handful of brakes and pulled hard, a purely instinctive reaction. The ABS brakes kicked in, moaned; one eye on the instrument panel, one eye on the tubes, still too fast, somewhere around 140, he saw the man run over the road, hand raised, and he had to brake again to avoid contact, realizing it was traffic police, one man, just one man, a speed trap. He must decide whether to run or stop, the choice too suddenly on him, the causality too wide; he chose to run, turned the throttle, passed the traffic officer and one car on the right, under the tree, only one car; he made up his mind, heart in his throat, and pulled the brakes again, bringing the motorbike to a standstill on the gravel verge. It didn’'t make sense, a lone traffic cop, one car, and he turned to see the man jogging toward him, half apologetic, and then he was standing there, saying, “Mister, for a minute there I thought you were going to run away.”

For the first time she felt fear as she climbed the stairs with the director to his office.

In that moment when he had looked at her in the Ops Room, something had altered between them, some balance. He had made a small movement with his head and she knew what he meant and followed, her staff unknowing but silently watching them.

It was not the change in the balance of power between her and the Zulu that clamped around her heart, it was the knowledge that she was no longer in control, that perception and reality had drifted apart like two moving targets.

He waited until she was inside, closed the door, and stood still. He looked unblinkingly at her. “That is not the CIA, Janina,” he said.

“I know.”

“Who is it?”

She sat down, although he had not invited her. “I don'’t know.”

“And the drive that Mpayipheli has?”

She shook her head.

He walked slowly through the room, around the desk. She saw his calm. He did not sit, but stood behind his chair, looking down at her.

“Have you told me everything, Janina?”

One man, the situation was surreal. He was moving in a dream world as he climbed off the motorbike, pulled off his gloves and helmet. “That’s a beautiful bike,” said the traffic officer.

For a moment he considered the irony: the traffic cop saw the removal of his accessories as submission; he knew he did it for ease of movement, should he need to react. Retreating from the threat of violence, he forced himself into pacifist mode. He could see the weapon in the shiny leather holster on the officer’s hip.

“We don'’t see many of those around here.”

The blood was pulsing through him, he was aware of his readiness. As long as he recognized it, he could control it. He still felt unreal; the conversation was impossibly banal. “It is the biggest-selling bike bigger than seven-fifty cc in the country,” he said, keeping his voice even with difficulty.

“You don'’t say?”

He didn’'t know how to answer. The motorbike was between them— he wanted to reduce the gap but also maintain it.

“You were going quite fast.”

“I was.” Was he going to get a ticket? Would it be as ridiculous as that?

“Let me see your driver’s license.”

Suspicion: he must know something, he could not be alone.

“Of course.” He took the key from the ignition, unlocked the luggage case, tried to scan the line of thorn trees and bushes surreptitiously. Where were the others?

“Lots of packing space, hey?” There was an ingenuous quality in the man, and the question loosened something in his belly, a strange feeling.

He zipped open the blue sports bag, looking for his wallet, took out the card, and handed it over. He kept a vigilant watch on the officer’s face, looking for covertness or deceit.

“Mpay—”

“Mpayipheli.” He helped the man pronounce it.

“Is this your motorbike, Mr. Mpayipheli?”

Then he knew what was happening, and the urge to giggle was overwhelming, pushing up in him without warning as his brain grasped the possibility that this provincial representative had absolutely no idea. It almost overcame him. He allowed it to bubble up modestly careful not to lose it but suddenly relaxing, laughing heartily, “I could never afford one of these.”

The officer laughed along with him, bonding— two middle-class men admiring the toys of the rich. “What do these things cost?”

“Just over ninety thousand.”

The man whistled through his teeth. “Whose is it?”

“My boss’s. He has an agency in the Cape. For BMW.” And again the laugh bubbled up in him, any minute now he was going to wake up under the tarpaulin of the El Camino, these moments of drama could not be real.

The traffic officer handed back his driver’s license. “I rode a Kawasaki when I did traffic in Bloemfontein. A seven-fifty. Big. I don'’t see a chance for that anymore.” Trying to strengthen the bond.

“I'’ve got a Honda Benly at home.”

“Those things last forever.”

They both knew the moment of truth was coming, a defining factor in the budding relationship. It hung in a moment of silence between them. The officer shrugged his shoulders apologetically. “I really should ticket you.”

Fuck, he could not hold it in. It was filling his body with the urgency of a call of nature. “I know” was all he could manage.

“You’d better go, before I change my mind.”

He smiled perhaps too widely, put out his hand. “Thank you.” He turned away quickly, putting away the license in the wallet, wallet in the bag, bag in the motorbike.

And take it easy,” came the voice over his shoulder. “Speed kills.”

He nodded, put on the helmet, and pulled on his gloves.

“You know all that I know,” said Janina Mentz, but she lied. “I planned the operation on Ismail Mohammed’s testimony. I recruited Johnny Kleintjes. Me alone. No one else knew anything. We compiled the data together. It is false but credible, I am sure of that. He contacted the Americans. They showed interest. They invited him to Lusaka. He went, and then the call came to his house.”

“And she got Mpayipheli.”

“Unforeseen.”

“Unforeseen, Janina? According to the transcript of Monica’s interview, Johnny came to her work two weeks before he left for Lusaka and said if something happened to him, Mpayipheli is the man. And moreover, on top of the hard drive in his safe was a note with Mpayiphlei’s phone number.”

Then she saw what the director saw, and the hand around her heart squeezed a little tighter. “He knew.”

The director nodded.

She saw from a wider perspective. “Johnny Kleintjes sold us out.”

“Us and the Americans, Janina.”

“But why, sir?”

“What do you know of Johnny Kleintjes?”

She threw up her hands. “I studied his file. Activist, exile, ANC member, computers …”

“Johnny is a communist, Janina.”

She sprang up, frustration and fear the goads. “Mr. Director, with respect, what does that mean? We were all communists when it suited us to have the help of the Eastern bloc. Where are the communists now? Marginalized dreamers who no longer have a significant influence in the government.”

She stood with her hands on the desk and became conscious of the distaste in the Zulu’s demeanor. When he eventually answered, his voice was soft. “Johnny Kleintjes may be a dreamer, but you were the one who marginalized him.”

“I don'’t understand,” she said, removing her hands and stepping back.

“What don'’t you understand, Janina?”

“Sir,” she said, sinking slowly into the chair, “to whom could he go? To whom did he sell us out?”

“That is what we must find out.”

“But it makes no sense. Communism … There’s nothing left. There’s no one anymore.”

“You are too literal, Janina. I suspect it’s more a question of ‘the enemy of my enemy’ ”

“You must explain.”

“Johnny always had a special hatred for the Americans.”

Insight came slowly to her, reluctantly. “You mean …”

“Who does the CIA currently view as threat number one?”

“Oh, my God,” said Janina.

A bespectacled black soldier with the epaulettes of the Anti-Aircraft School on his shoulders came to fetch Captain Tiger Mazibuko under the tree. “The colonel asks the captain to come quickly.”

He jumped up. “Have they got him?” He jogged ahead, aware of the expectations of the RU behind him.

“I don'’t think so, Captain.”

“You don'’t think so?”

“The colonel will tell you, Captain.” He jogged into the building. The colonel stood at the radio, microphone in hand.

“We have a situation.”

“What?”

“There are thirty-nine Hell’s Angels on motorbikes at the Windsorton Road roadblock. They want to come through.”

“Where the hell is Windsorton Road?”

“Forty-five kilometers north, on the N12.”

“The Johannesburg road?”

The colonel nodded.

“Fuck them. Send them home.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why?”

“They say there are another fifty on the way. And when they arrive they are going through and if we want to stop them, we will have to shoot them.”

Tiger reconsidered. “Let them through.”

Are you sure?”

Mazibuko smiled. “Very.”

The colonel hesitated a moment and then depressed the SEND button on the microphone. “Sergeant, let them through whenever they want.”

“Roger and out,” came the response.

“What is your plan, Captain?” the colonel asked just before Mazibuko walked out with a certain zip in his step.

He did not look up, but kept walking. “diversion, Colonel. Nothing like a bit of diversion for a bunch of frustrated soldiers,” he said.

The traffic officer was carefully rolling up the tubes of the Gatsometer. It was a tedious job on his own, but he did it mechanically, without bitterness, just another part of his easy routine. His thoughts were occupied with the black motorcyclist.

Strange, that. A first. Black man on a big motorbike. You don'’t see many of those.

But that wasn'’t all.

The thing was, when he rode off, the BMW’s flat, two-cylinder engine made a nice muffled sound. He could swear he heard the man laugh, a deep, thundering, infectious, paralyzing laugh.

Must be his imagination.

“Who?” asked Janina Mentz. “Al Qaeda? How, sir? How?”

“My personal feeling is Tehran. I suspect Johnny had made a contact or two some way or another. Perhaps through the local extremists. But in my opinion, that is not the burning question, Janina.”

She drew a deep breath to damp the growing unease. She was watchful for what would follow.

“The question we must ask ourselves now is, What is on the hard drive?”

She knew why the balance had shifted. He was not the Zulu source, he was not Inkululeko. He was free. Of suspicion, misunderstanding, circumstantial evidence. He was pure.

The director leaned toward her and said, with great tenderness: “I had hoped you would have some ideas.”

The lieutenant of First Infantry Battalion had put a lot of thought into the roadblock at Petrusburg. His problem was that the place had a proliferation of roads leading like arteries out of the heart of the town in every direction— three dirt roads north, the east-west route of the N8 to Kimberley and Bloemfontein, the R48 to Koffiefontein, another dirt road south, and then the paved road to the black township, Bolokaneng.

Where to put up the blockade?

His eventual decision was based on the available intelligence: the fugitive was heading for Kimberley. That is why the roadblock was just four hundred meters outside the town boundary on the Kimberley side, on the N8. For extra insurance, the SAPS, who provided two vans and four policemen, according to the agreement, were sitting on the gravel road that ran parallel east-west and joined the N8 farther along toward the City of Diamonds.

Now the lieutenant had a more difficult decision to make. One thing was for sure: if you are a member of the military faced with a complicated choice, your first option is to pass the decision up the chain of command. That is how you cover your back.

So he did not hesitate to resort to the radio.

“Oscar Hotel,” he said to the ops commander at the Anti-Aircraft School. “I have stopped nineteen riders on BMW motorbikes here. One says he is a lawyer and will get an injunction against us if we don'’t let them through. Over.”

He could swear he heard the colonel say “Fuck,” but perhaps the radio reception was not clear.

“Stand by, Papa Bravo.”

Papa Bravo.

Military abbreviation for Petrusburg. There was once a time when he had felt like a clown using these terms, but it had passed. He waited, looking out of the tent that stood beside the road. The BMWs stood in ranks of two, all with headlights on and engines idling. Where the fuck were they going? His men stood with their assault rifles over their shoulders, looking on curiously. There is something about a group of bikers. Like a Mongol horde of Genghis Khan on the way to cause desolation

“Papa Bravo, this is Oscar Hotel Quebec, come in, over.”

“Papa Bravo in, over.”

“Are you sure there are no black guys on any of the BMWs, over.”

“We are sure, Oscar Hotel, over.”

“Let them through, Papa Bravo. Let them through. Over.”

“Roger, Papa Bravo over and out.”

27.

In the editorial office of the Cape Times Allison Healy read the story that had come in from the Star'’s offices in Johannesburg.

“A violent man, an aggressive troublemaker, perhaps a psychopath” is how a former comrade-in-arms of the fugitive Thobela Mpayipheli describes the man now being sought across three provinces by intelligence authorities, the SA National Defence Force, and the SAPS.

According to Brig. Lucas Morape, a senior member of the Supply and Transport Unit at SANDF headquarters in Pretoria, he served with Mpayipheli in Tanzania and at a Kazakhstan military base in the former USSR, where Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers were trained as part of Eastern bloc support for the Struggle in the eighties.

“In one instance, he almost beat a Russian soldier to death in a mess-room fistfight. It took the leadership weeks to repair the diplomatic damage done by this senseless act of brutality.”

Mpayipheli allegedly received sensitive intelligence data from his Cape Town employer and is heading north. He slipped through a military cordon at Three Sisters early this morning during a heavy thunderstorm. His current whereabouts are unknown.

In an issued statement, Brig. Morape goes on to describe Mpayipheli as a compulsive brawler who became such a problem to the ANC that he was removed from the training program. “I am not surprised by allegations that he worked for a drug syndicate in the Cape. It fits his psychopathic profile perfectly.”

“Psychopathic profile,” she said softly to herself, and shook her head. Suddenly everyone was a psychiatrist.

How well the brigadier’s opinion fitted in with the efforts of the minister.

The wheels were rolling, the great engine of the state was building up steam. Mpayipheli did not stand a chance.

And then her cell phone rang.

“Allison Healy.”

“This is Zatopek van Heerden. You were looking for me.” The tone was belligerent.

“Thank you for returning my call, Doctor.” She kept the tone cheery. “It is in connection with Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli. I would like to ask a few—”

“No.” The voice was brusque and irritable.

“Doctor, please …”

“don'’t ‘doctor’ me.”

“Please help, I—”

“Where did you hear that I know him?”

“Orlando Arendse told me.”

He was silent for so long that she thought he had hung up on her. She wanted to say, “Doctor,” or something again and was wondering how to address him when he asked: “Did you say Orlando Arendse?”

“That’s right, the … um …”

“The drug baron.”

“Yes.”

“Orlando talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“You have guts, Allison Healy.”

“Um …”

“Where do you want to meet?”

Thirty minutes south of Petrusburg, just across the Riet river, the road curves lazily between the Free State kopjes, a few wide sweeping curves before it returns to straight as a die. Enough to draw his concentration back to the motorbike again; the engine was running optimally in the heat, a reassuring constant, tangible heartbeat beneath him. This extension of his body lent him security. It was the moment he realized he could keep on riding, past Lusaka, continuing north, day after day, he and the machine and the road to the horizon. It was the moment when he understood the addiction the white clients had spoken of.

It was that time of day.

The sun shone a benign orange, as if it knew the day’s task was nearly done.

He had discovered the magic of late afternoon in Paris, during his two years of desolation after the Wall had fallen. He had fallen, too, his lot inextricably entangled with the Berlin barrier, from celebrated assassin, the darling of the Stasi and KGB, to uneducated unemployed. From wealthy man of the world to the disillusionment of knowing that the thirty dollars in his account was the last and there would be no more income. From arrogance to depression, angrily and reluctantly accepting the new reality in between. Until he picked himself up from self-pity and went door-to-door looking for work like any lowly laborer. Monsieur Merceron had asked to see his hands—“These hands have never worked, but they are built to work”— and he got the job, just west of the Gare du Nord in Montmartre, gofer at the bakery, sweeper of floury floors, bearer of sacks and boxes, scrubber of the big mechanical blenders, early-morning deliverer of baguettes, with arms full of loaves. In the winter the steam rising from the warm bread into his nostrils had become the fragrance of Paris, fresh, exotic, and wonderful. And in the late afternoon when the sun angled down and the whole city was in transition between work and home, he would go back to his first-story apartment near the Salvador Dalí museum. Every day he walked the long route, first up the steps on the hill to the Sacré-Coeur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and went to sit right at the top, his body delightfully weary, and watched the evening claim the city like a jealous lover. The sounds rose up, the shadings slowly shifting to grays, the crouching mass of Notre-Dame, the twisting Seine, the sun sparking gold off the dome of Les Invalides, the dignified loneliness of the Eiffel Tower and in the east the Arc de Triomphe. He sat till every landmark disappeared in the dark and the lights flickered like stars in the city firmament, the scene changing to a wonder world without dimension.

Then he would rise and go into the church, allowing the peace of the interior to fill him before lighting a candle for each of his victims.

The memory filled him with a deep nostalgia for the simplicity of those two years, and he thought that with the money in the sports bag, if he kept the nose pointing north, he could be there in a month.

He smiled sardonically in the helmet— how ironic, now he wished to be there. When the one thing, the single lack, the great desire, when he had been there was this very landscape that stretched out before him; how many times had he wished he could see the umbrella of a thorn tree against the gray veld, how he had longed for the earthshaking rumble of a thunderhead, the dark gray anvil shape, the lightning of a storm over the wide open, endless plains of Africa.

Vincent Radebe was waiting for her at the door of the Ops Room and said, “Ma’am, I will bring in a camp bed for Mrs. Nzululwazi; I realize now we can’t let her go,” and Janina put her hand on the black man’s shoulder and said “Vincent, I know it wasn'’t an easy decision. That’s the trouble with our work: the decisions are never easy.”

She walked to the center of the room. She said every team must decide who would handle the night watch and who would go home to sleep, so that there would be a fresh shift to start the day in the morning. She said she was going out for an hour or two to see her children. If there was anything, they had her cell phone number.

Radebe waited until she was out before slowly and unwillingly walking to the interview room. He knew what he must say to the woman; he needed to find the right words.

When he unlocked the door and entered, she sprang up urgently.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Ma’am …”

“My child,” she said. “I have to fetch my child.”

“Ma’am, it is safer to stay here. Just one night…” He saw the fear in her face, the panic in her eyes.

“No,” she said. “My child …”

“Slow down, ma’am. Where is he?”

“At the day care. He is waiting for me. I am already late. Please, I beg you, you can’t do this to my child.”

“They will take care of him, ma’am.”

She wept and sank to her knees, clutching his leg. Her voice was dangerously shrill, “Please, my brother, please …”

“Just one night, ma’am. They will look after him, I will make sure. It is safer this way.”

“Please. Please.”

Thobela saw the sign beside the road that said only ten kilometers to Petrusburg. He drew a deep breath, steeling himself for what lay ahead, the next obstacle in his path. There was a main route that he had to cross, another barrier before he could spill over into the next section of countryside with its dirt roads and extended farms. It was the last hurdle before the world between him and the Botswana border lay open.

And he needed petrol.

The traffic officer of the Free State Traffic Authority stopped at the office in Koffiefontein. He opened the trunk of the patrol car, removed the Gatsometer in its case and carried it inside with difficulty put it down, and closed the door.

His two colleagues from Admin were ready to leave. “You’re late,” said one, a white woman in her fifties.

“You didn’'t catch the biker, did you?” asked the other, a young Sotho with glasses and a fashionable haircut.

“What biker?” asked the traffic officer.

Allison Healy found the plot at Morning Star with difficulty. She did not know this area of the Cape; no one knew this area of the Cape. “When you drive through the gate, the road forks. Keep left, it’s the small white house,” Dr. Zatopek van Heerden had said.

She found it, with Table Mountain as a distant backdrop. And far out to sea a wall of clouds stretching as far as the eye could see hung like a long gray banner in front of the setting sun.

Lizette ran out of the house before she had stopped the car, and when Janina opened the car door, her daughter threw her arms around her theatrically. “Mamma.” A dramatic cry with the embrace and she felt like laughing at this child of hers in that uncomfortable stage of self-consciousness. With arms around her neck she felt the warmth of her daughter’s body, smelled the fragrance of her hair.

“Hullo, my girl.”

“I missed you.” An exaggerated exclamation.

“I missed you, too.” Knowing the hug would go on too long, that it was as it should be, she would have to say, “Wait, let me get out,” and Lizette would ask, “aren'’t you going to put the car away?” and she would say no, I have to go back soon. She looked up and Lien stood on the steps of the veranda, still and dignified just to make the point that she could control her emotions, that she was the elder, stronger one, and Janina felt that her heart was full.

“Mamma,” Lien called from the veranda, “you forgot to turn off your blinker light again.”

Vincent Radebe carefully closed the door of the interview room behind him. He could no longer hear the sobs.

He knew he had made the wrong decision. He had realized it inside there, with her face against his knees. She was just a mother, not a player; she had one desire, and that was to be with her child.

He stood still a second to analyze his feelings, because they were new and unfamiliar to him, and then he understood what had happened. The completion of the circle— he had finally become what he did not want to be and just now realized he must get out of here, away from this job, this was not what he wanted to do. Perhaps it was something he could not do. His ideal was to serve his country, this new fragile infant democracy, to raise up and build, not to break down— and look at him now. He made up his mind to write his letter of resignation now and put it into Janina Mentz’s hand, pack his things, and leave. He expected to feel relief, but it was absent. He went over to the stairs, the darkness still in his mind.

Later he would wonder if his subconscious had made him leave the door unlocked.

Later he would run through his exit of the room in his head, and every time he would turn the key.

But it would be too late.

Captain Tiger Mazibuko put away the gun cloths and oil in the olive green canvas bag and stood up. He walked purposefully over to where Little Joe was sitting with Zongu and Da Costa. He still felt guilty about shouting at Moroka.

“Do you feel like a bit of fun?” he asked.

They looked up at him, nodding and expectant.

“How many of us can take on forty Hell’s Angels?” he asked.

Da Costa got it immediately and laughed, “Hu-hu.”

“Just one or two,” said Little Joe, looking for his approval.

“Take the whole of Alpha, Captain,” said Zongu. “We deserve it.”

“Right,” said Mazibuko. “don'’t make a big issue of it. Get the men together quietly.”

That was when they heard running steps and turned around. It was the bespectacled soldier, the colonel’s messenger.

“Captain, the colonel…,” he said, out of breath.

“What now? Guys on Hondas?”

“No, no, Captain, it’s Mpayipheli,” and Mazibuko felt that internal shock.

“What?” Too nervous to hope.

“The colonel will tell you—”

He grabbed the soldier by the shirt. “Tell me now.”

The eyes were frightened behind the glasses, the voice shook. “They know where he is.”

28.

He recognized the symptoms, the heart rate increasing I steadily, the soft glow of heat, the fine perspiration on palms and forehead, and the vague light-headedness of a brain that could not keep up with the oversupply of oxygen. He reacted out of habit, drew a deep breath, and kept it all under control. He pulled in at the first petrol station in the main street of Petrusburg and watched two F 650 GS riders pull away. He stopped at the pumps, the engine still running when the petrol jockey said, “Can you believe it, black like me.”

He did not react.

“Do you know what bee-em-double-you stands for?” asked the jockey, a young black guy of eighteen or nineteen.

“What?”

“Bankrot maar windgat, that’s what the Boers say. Bankrupt but boastful.”

He tried to laugh, switched off the bike.

“Fill up?”

“Please.” He unlocked the fuel cap.

“What are you going to do when you find the Xhosa biker?” the jockey asked in Tswana as he pushed his electronic key against the petrol pump. The figures turned back to zeroes.

“Excuse me?”

“You guys are just going to be in the way. That man needs a clear road.”

“The Xhosa biker,” he repeated, and understanding came to him slowly. He watched the tumbling numbers on the pump.

Eventually the attendant asked: “So where are you from?”

The pump showed nineteen liters and the petrol was still running.

“From the Cape.”

“The Cape?”

“I am the Xhosa biker,” he said on inspiration.

“In your dreams, brother.” Twenty-one liters and the tank was full. “The real one is at Kimberley and they are never going to catch him. And you know what? I say good luck to him, because it’s high time somebody stopped the gravy train.”

“Oh?”

“It doesn'’t take a rocket scientist to work out what he’s got. It’s the numbers of the government’s Swiss bank accounts. Maybe he will draw the money and give it to the people. That would be real redistribution of wealth. You owe me R74.65.”

Thobela Mpayipheli handed over the money. “Where’s the roadblock?”

“There are two, but the BMWs can go through. They shouldn'’t, because you guys are just going to get in the way.”

He put away the wallet and locked the case. “Where?” His voice was serious.

The jockey’s eyes narrowed. “The Kimberley side. Turn left at the four-way stop.” He indicated up the street.

“And the other one?”

“On the Paardeberg gravel road. It’s farther on, other side the co-op, then left.”

“And if I want to go to Boshof ?”

“What is your name?” asked the man in Xhosa.

“Nelson Mandela.”

The jockey looked at him, and then the smile spread broadly across his face. “I know what you are planning.”

“What?”

“You want to wait for him on the other side of Kimberley.”

“You are too clever for me.”

“Boshof is straight ahead via Poplar Grove for about twenty kilos, then turn left other side the Modder and right again at the next bridge.”

“The Modder?”

“The mighty Modder, Capie, the Modder river.”

“Thank you.” He had the helmet on, just pushed his fingers into the gloves.

“If you see him, tell him, ‘Sharp, sharp.’ ”

“Sharpzinto, muhle, stereke.”

He pulled away. “You speak the language, my bro, you speak the language,” he heard the jockey calling after him.

Miriam Nzululwazi knelt by the chair in the interview room and wept. Her tears began with the fear that had grown too big, the weight of the walls too heavy so that she slid from the chair, her eyes shut so that she could not see them closing in on her, the memories of the Caledon Square cells that echoed in her head. The fear had grown too great and with it the knowledge that Pakamile would wait and wait and wait for his mother to fetch him, for the first time he would wait in vain because she was never late, in six years she had always been there to pick him up. But today he would not know what was wrong, the other children would be fetched, one after the other except him— please God— she could see him, she could feel her child’s fear, and it crushed her heart. Gradually her weeping included the wider loss of her life with Thobela, the lost perfection of it, the love, the security in every day, the predictability of a man who came home evening after evening and held her tight and whispered his love to her. The scene of him and her son in the vegetable garden behind the house, the block of man on his haunches by the small figure of the boy, close together, and her Pakamile’s undisguised hero worship. The loss of those evenings when they sat in the kitchen, he with his books that he had studied and read with a thirst and a dedication that was scary. She had sat and watched him, her big, lovely man who now and again would look up with that light of new knowledge in his eyes and say, “Did you know …,” and express his wonderment of the new world he was discovering. She would want to stand up and throw herself down before him and say, “You can’t be real.” When they lay in bed and he shifted his body close to hers and with his arm over her pulled her possessively tight against himself, his voice would travel wide paths. He would share with her what was in his heart, so many things, the future, the three of them and a new beginning on a farm that lay waiting, green and misty and beautiful. About their country and politics and people, his often weird observations at work, his worry over the violence and poverty of the townships, the filtering away of Xhosa culture in the desert sands of wannabe American. And sometimes, in the moments before they drifted into sleep, he would speak of his mother and father. How he wished to make peace, how he wished to do penance, and now she wept because it was all gone, lost— nothing would ever be the same. The sobs shook her, and the tears dampened the seat of the chair. Eventually she calmed, emptied of crying, but one thing remained— the impulse to get out.

She did not know why she stood up and tried the door. Maybe her subconscious had registered no sound of a key turning with that last exit, maybe she was merely desperate. But when she turned the handle and the door gave to her fingers, she was shocked and pushed it shut again. She went back and sat in the chair, on the edge, and stared at the door, her heart beating wildly at the possibilities awaiting her.

Allison sat on the veranda of the little white house with its green roof. She sat in a green plastic garden chair opposite Dr. Zatopek van Heerden, captivated by his lean body and his intense eyes and energy locked up in him like a compressed spring, plus something indefinable, unrecognizable but familiar.

It was hot and the light was soft in the transition from afternoon to evening. He had a beer and she drank water with tinkling ice cubes. He had cross-examined her for all she knew, hovering like a falcon over her words, ready to swoop on nonsense, and now he had heard her chronological story and he asked, “What now? What do you want?”

She was discomfited by the intensity of his gaze— he looked right inside her, those eyes never still, over her and on her, searching and measuring, evaluating. With his psychological expertise, could he multiply the fractions of her voice and body language to a sum of her very thoughts? Strangely there was a sexuality in him that reached out and lured an involuntary response from deep in her body.

“The truth,” she said.

“The truth.” Cynical. “Do you believe there is such a thing?” He did not look away as other people did when they talked. His eyes never left her face. What was it, this thing she felt?

“Truth is a moving target,” she admitted.

“My dilemma,” he said, “is loyalty. Thobela Mpayipheli is my friend.”

Four Rooivalk attack helicopters flew low over the flat earth, crossing the boundary between Northern Cape and the Free State Province. Behind flew two Oryx, slow and cumbersome by comparison, each carrying four members of the RU’s Team Alpha in its constricted interior. The men were in full kit for the job: bulletproof vests, steel helmets mounted with infrared night sights, weapons held comfortably clasped with both hands between knees. In the leading Oryx, Tiger Mazibuko tried to conduct a cell phone conversation over the roar of the engines.

Janina Mentz was in the dining room of her house, between the school homework books of her daughters. She could barely make out Mazibuko’s words.

“Where, Tiger? Where?”

“Somewhere near Pe—”

“I can’t hear you.” She was practically shouting.

“Petrusburg.”

Petrusburg? She had no idea where that was.

“I’m going back to the Ops Room, Tiger. We will try the radio.”

“… get him …”

“What?”

The signal was gone.

“What’s that about Petrusburg, Ma?” asked Lien.

“It’s work, sweetie, I’ve got to go.”

The tension he felt going into the petrol station had resurrected a memory, brought it back from the past, the same trembling in his hands and perspiration on his face during that first time, that first assassination. He was in Munich with the SVD in his hands, the long sharpshooter’s weapon, the latest model with the synthetic nonfolding stock, a weapon whose deadly reach was 3,800 meters. The cross hairs looked for Klemperer, the double agent who should come out a door a kilometer away.

He felt as if Evgeniy Fedorovich Dragunov were lying beside him, the legendary modest Russian weapons developer. He had met him briefly in East Germany when he and the other students of the Stasi sharpshooters school were helping test an experimental SVDS. Comrade Evgeniy Fedorovich was fascinated by the black student with the impossible groupings. At two thousand meters with a cross wind of seventeen kilometers per hour and the poor light of an overcast winter’s day, Thobela Mpayipheli had shot a Rioo factor of less than 400 mm. The stocky aging Russian had said something in his mother tongue and pushed up his black-framed eyeglasses onto his forehead before reaching out and gripping the Xhosa’s shoulder, to feel if he was real, perhaps.

He wanted to dedicate this one to Dragunov but, dear God, his heart bounced so in his ribs on this, his first blooding, his fingers and palms were wet with sweat. On the practice range it was the testosterone of competition, but this was real, a man of flesh and blood, a bald middle-aged West German who was feeding on both sides of the fence. The KGB had earmarked him for elimination, and it was time for the ANC’s exchange student to earn his keep. There was steam on the telescopic lens; he dared not take his eye from the door. It opened.

Miriam sat on the chair, staring at the door, trying to recall the route they had followed bringing her here. Was there another way out? It was so quiet in the building, just the soft sound of the air conditioner and now and then the creak of metal expanding or contracting. She could not wait much longer.

“I don'’t want to be on the record,” said Dr. Zatopek van Heerden. “That is the condition.”

“I will show my story to you first.” She hoped for a compromise, but he shook his head.

“I am not anti-media,” he said. “I believe every country gets the media it deserves. But Thobela is my friend.”

Allison had to make a decision, and eventually she said, “It’s a deal.” Then Van Heerden began to speak, his eyes never leaving her face.

Tiger held the light of the little flashlight to the map before him. The fucking problem was that the R48 forked beyond Koffie-fontein, the R705 went to Jacobsdal, the R48 going on to Petrus-burg. He had ordered four Rooivalks south to Jacobsdal, the other four with the two Oryx to the more likely east, but the problem was that the damn traffic officer had alerted them too late. By Mazibuko’s reckoning, the fugitive could be past Petrusburg but where? Where the fuck? Because the roadblocks, two bloody roadblocks, said a horde of BMWs had gone through, but not one had a black guy, and the possibilities were legion. Where are you going, you dog? Dealesville or Boshof? His finger traced the routes farther, and he gambled on Mafikeng and the Botswana border. That made it Boshof. But had he crossed the Modder river yet? The Rooivalks would each have to follow a dirt road; there were too many alternatives.

“He is not a complex man, but that is precisely where you can make a mistake,” said Van Heerden. “Too many people equate uncomplicated with simple or a lack of intelligence. Thobela’s noncomplexity lies in his decision-making abilities, he is a man of action, he examines the facts, he accepts or rejects, he does not worry or agonize over it. If Miriam told you he was helping a friend by taking something to Lusaka, then he made the decision that his loyalty lay with his friend, regardless of the consequences.

Finished and klaar. They are going to battle to get him to stop. They are going to have their hands full.”

Only part of his attention was on the long lit path that the double lamps of the GS shone through the growing dark. The dirt road was a good one, reddish brown and hard-surfaced. He kept his speed down to sixty or seventy. That fall in the Karoo storm still bothered him. The rest of his mind was in Munich, on his first assassination. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware that during the past twenty-four hours he was reliving the past, as if he was somehow reactivated. He let it flow, let it out, perhaps it was part of a healing process, a changeover, a closure so that he could shake it off, a period at the end of a paragraph in his metamorphosis.

The door had opened and his finger had curled around the trigger, the SVD became an extension of his being. In his mind’s eye he could see the bullet waiting for metal to hit the percussion cap, the 9.8 gram steel of the 7.62 mm bullet waiting to be spun through the grooved tunnel of the 24 cm barrel, through the silencer, and then in a curved trajectory, irrevocably on its way. Pressure on the trigger increased, a woman and child appeared in the lens, freezing him, the cross rested on her forehead, right below the band of the blue wool cap, he saw the smoothness of her face, the bright healthy skin, laugh lines at her eyes, and he blew out his breath and the tempo of his heart accelerated some more.

Tiger Mazibuko screamed orders into the microphone. There were three routes to Boshof: from Paardeberg, Poplar Grove, and Wolwespruit. Two Rooivalks on the first, his primary choice, one each on the other two, flying north— he wanted them to start searching from Seretse.

“I am putting the TDATS on infrared,” said the pilot over the radio, and Mazibuko had no idea what he was talking about. “That means we will see him even if his lights are off.”

29.

Miriam Nzululwazi stood up suddenly and opened the door and went out, closing it quietly behind her. The passage was empty. Gray cold tiled floor stretched left and right. She had come from the left; there were offices and people that way. She turned right, the flat heels of her shoes audible, tip-tap, tip-tap. She walked with purpose until she saw another door at the end of the passage.

She could just make out the letters, in faded peeling red paint: FIRE ESCAPE.

“How well was he trained as a soldier?” asked Allison.

“Soldier? He was never a soldier.”

“But he was in Umkhonto.”

He looked at her in surprise. “You don'’t know?”

“don'’t know what?”

“He was an assassin. For the KGB.”

She knew her face betrayed her shock and dismay.

“And now you are going to judge him. You think that changes everything?”

“It’s just…”

“Less honorable?”

She searched for the right words. “No, no, I…,” but he did not give her time.

“You formed a picture in your head of a foot soldier of the Struggle, a relatI'vely simple man, maybe something of a rebel who broke out now and again, but nothing more than that. Just an ordinary soldier.”

“Well, yes. No. I didn’'t think him ordinary… .”

“I don'’t know the whole story. The Russians discovered him. Shooting competition in Kazakhstan, some base in the mountains where the ANC men were trained. Probably he shot the hell out of the commies and they saw possibilities. He had two years of training in East Germany at some special spy school.”

“How many people did he …”

“I don'’t remember precisely. Ten, fifteen …”

“My God.” She blew out a breath. “Are we still off the record here?”

“Yes, Allison Healy we are.”

“My God.” She would not be able to write this.

He had given the lens a quick wipe with the soft cloth and lined up his eye behind it again. Not too close, just the right focus length, checked his adjustments again, and waited for the door. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead— he would have to get a sweatband, it was going to sting his eyes. The door, dark wood, was shut again, his palms were wet and the temperature inside the warm clothes still rising. He became aware of a distaste for what he was doing. This was not the way to wage war, it was not right; this was not the way of his people.

There was a bar on the door, white letters on a green background that read PUSH/DRUK, and Miriam obeyed. There was a snap as the lock disconnected and the door creaked and groaned as the unused hinges protested, and she saw she was outside, she saw the night and she heard the city sounds and stepped forward and closed the door behind her. She looked down, and far below there was an alley but right here in front of her was a metal rail and the rusty wounds of a sawed-off metal stairway. She realized she was in a dead end. The door had clicked shut behind her and there was no handle on the outside.

The light flashed on the access control panel and the official picked up the internal phone and called the Ops Room. It was Quinn who answered.

“Fire door on the seventh floor. The alarm has been activated,” said the official.

Quinn raised his voice. “Who is on the seventh floor? The fire door has been activated.”

Six meters from him Vincent Radebe sat listening to the crackle of the Rooivalk radios more than a thousand kilometers north, and he only half registered what Quinn had said, but the hair rose on his neck.

“What?” he said.

“Someone has opened the fire door on seven.” Quinn and Radebe looked at each other and understood, and Radebe felt an icy hand knot his innards.

“You are a journalist. You should know that concepts of good and bad are relatI've,” said Zatopek van Heerden. He was up and moving to the edge of the veranda, looking out at the night sky. “No, not relatI've. Clumsy. Insufficient. You want to take sides. You want to be for him or against him. You need someone to be right, on the side of justice.”

“You sound like Orlando Arendse,” she said.

“Orlando is not a fool.”

“How many people did he murder?”

“Listen to yourself. Murder. He murdered no one. He fought a war. And I don'’t know how many of the enemy died at his hand, but it must have been many, because he was good. He never actually said, but I saw him in action and his ability was impressive.”

And then he became a gofer at a motorbike dealership?”

Van Heerden moved again, this time closer to her, and for Allison it was equally stimulating and threatening. He passed close by her and leaned back on the white plastic garden table and sat on it. She smelled him; she swore she could smell him.

“I wondered when you would get to the crux of the matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“The question that you and the spooks must ask is why Tho-bela left Orlando. What changed? What happened?”

“And the answer is?”

“That is his Achilles’ heel. You see, his loyalty was always complete. First, it was the Business. The ANC. The Fight. And when it was all over and they left him high and dry, he took his talents and found someone who could use them. He served Orlando with an irreproachable work ethic. And then something happened, something inside him. I don'’t know what it was— I have my suspicions, but I don'’t know precisely. We were in the hospital, he and I, beaten and shot up, and one day just before six he came to my bed and said he’s finished with violence and fighting. I still wanted to chat, to pull his leg, the way we did, but he was serious, emotional, I could see it was something to him. Something big.”

And that is his Achilles’ heel?”

Van Heerden leaned forward and she wanted to retreat from him.

“He thinks he can change. He thinks he has changed.”

She heard the words, registered the meaning, overwhelmingly aware, too, of the subtext between them, and in that moment she understood the attraction, the invisible bond: he was like her, somewhere inside there was something missing, something out of place, not quite at home in this world, just like her, as if they didn’'t belong here.

And then the door opened and the bald man appeared, eyes blinking in the bright light of the street outside, and Thobela’s finger caressed the trigger and the long black weapon jerked in his hands and coughed in his ears, and a heartbeat later the blood made a pretty pattern on the wood. In the forty-seven seconds it took to dismantle the weapon and pack it away in the bag, he knew he could not wage war like this. There was no honor in it.

The enemy must see him. The enemy must be able to fight back.

Miriam Nzululwazi knew there was only one way out. She had to climb, she had to get over the railing and hang from the lowest bar and then let herself drop the extra meter to the lower-story fire escape and then repeat the process till she was there where the sawed-off stairs resumed and zigzagged down to the ground.

She pulled herself up over the rail. She did not look down but swung her leg over, then her body, seven floors above the dirty, smelly alley.

“Ma, you’re never home anymore,” said Lien, outside by the car.

“Ai, my child, it’s not because I

want

to be at work. You know I sometimes have to work extra hours.”

“Is it the motorbike man, Mamma?” asked Lizette.

“You watch too much television.” Stern.

“But is it, Mamma?”

She started the car and said softly: “You know I can’t talk about it.”

“Some people say he’s a hero, Mamma.”

“Suthu says she battles to get you to go to bed. You must listen to her. You hear?”

“When will we see you again, Ma?”

“Tomorrow, I promise.” She put the car in reverse and released the clutch. “Sleep tight.”

“Is he, Mamma? Is he a hero?” But she backed out, in a hurry and did not answer.

Quinn and Radebe ran, the black man ahead up the stairs, their footfalls loud in the quiet passage. How was it possible, how could she have escaped? It could not be her. They ran past the door of the interview room; he saw it was shut, which gave him courage. She must be there, but his priority was the fire-escape door. He bumped it open and at first saw nothing, and relief flooded over him. Quinn’s breath was at his neck, and they both stepped out onto the small steel platform.

“Thank God,” he heard Quinn say behind him.

“As long as he believes it,” said Zatopek van Heerden, “things shouldn'’t get out of hand. They even have a chance to persuade him to turn back. If they approach him correctly.”

“You sound skeptical,” said Allison.

“Have you heard of chaos theory?”

She shook her head. The moon lay in the east, a big round light shining down on them. She saw his hand lift from the table and hang in the air; for a moment she thought he was going to touch her and she wanted it, but the hand hung there, an aid in the search for an explanation. “Basically, it says that a minute change in a small local system can expand to upset the balance in another larger system, far removed from it. It is a mathematical model; they replicate it with computers.”

“you’'ve lost me.”

His hand dropped back and supported his position on the table. “It’s difficult. First, you have to understand who he is. What his nature is. Some people, most people, are passive bending reeds in the winds of life. Resignedly accepting changes in their environment. Oh, yes, they will moan and complain and threaten, but eventually they will adjust and be sucked along by the stream. Thobela belongs to the other group, the minority, the doers, the activators and the catalysts. When apartheid threatened his genetic fitness index, he resolved to change that environment. The apparent impossibility of the challenge was irrelevant. You follow?”

“I think so.”

“Now, at this moment he is suppressing that natural behavior. He thinks he can be a bending reed. And as long as the equilibrium of his own system is undisturbed, he can do it. So far it has been easy. Just his job and Miriam and Pakamile. A safe, closed system. He wants to keep it like that. The problem is life is never like that. The real world is not in balance. Chaos theory says in the balance of probability, something should happen somewhere to ultimately change that environment.”

Vincent Radebe looked down just before he was about to go back through the fire door, and that’s when he saw her. She was suspended between heaven and earth below him. Their eyes met and hers were full of fear. Her legs were a pendulum swinging out over the drop and back over the lower platform.

“Miriam,” he cried with utter despair, and bent to grab her arms, to save her.

“And then what?” asked Allison. “If this theoretical thing happens and he comes back to what he is?”

“Then all hell will break loose,” said Dr. Zatopek van Heerden pensively.

Her reaction was to let go, to open her cramping fingers.

The pendulum of her body took her past the platform of the sixth floor. She fell. She made no sound.

Vincent Radebe saw it all, saw the twist of her body as it slowly revolved to the bottom. He thought he heard the soft noise when she hit the dirty stone pavement of the alley far below.

He cried once, in his mother tongue, desperately to heaven.

Thobela Mpayipheli absorbed the world around him, the moon big and beautiful in the black heaven, the Free State plains, grass veld stretching in the lovely light as far as the eye could see, here and there dark patches of thorn trees, the path that the headlights threw out before him. He felt the machine and he felt his own body and he felt his place on this continent and he saw himself and he felt life coursing through him, a full, flooding river; it swept him along and he knew that he must cherish this moment, store it somewhere secure because it was fleeting and rare, this intense and perfect unity with the unI'verse.

30.

Janina Mentz’s cell phone rang twice as she drove back to Wale Street Chambers. The first caller was the director. “I know you are enjoying a well-earned rest, Janina, but I have some interesting news for you. But not over the phone.”

“I’m on my way back now, sir.” They were both aware of the insecurity of the cellular network. “There are other things happening, too.”

“Oh?”

“I will fill you in.”

“That is good, Janina,” said the director.

“I will be there in ten minutes.”

Barely three minutes later it was Quinn. “Ma’am, we need you.”

She did not pick up the depression in his voice at first. “I know, Rudewaan, I am on the way.”

“No. It’s something else,” he said, and she now registered his tone. Worry and frustration colored her answer. “I am coming. The director wants me, too.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

She ended the call.

The children, the job. Eternal pressure. Everyone wanted something from her, and she had to give. It was always that way. Ever since she could remember. Demands. Her father and mother. Her husband. And then single parenthood and more pressure, more people, all saying, “give, more”; there were moments when she wanted to stand up and scream, “Fuck you all!” and pack her bags and leave because what was the use? Everyone just wanted more. Her parents and her ex-husband and the director and her colleagues. They demanded, they took, and she must keep giving; the emotions built up in her, anger and self-pity, and she looked for comfort where she always found it, in the secret places, the clandestine refuge where no one went but her.

He saw the helicopter silhouetted against the moon, just for a moment, a pure fluke, so quick that he thought he had imagined it, and then his finger reached feverishly for the headlight switch, found it and switched off.

He pulled up in the middle of the dirt road and killed the engine, struggled with the helmet buckle, took the gloves off first, and then pulled off the helmet. Listened.

Nothing.

They had searchlights on those things. Perhaps some form of night vision. They would follow the roads.

He heard the deep rumble, somewhere ahead. They had found him and he felt naked and vulnerable and he must find a place to hide. He wondered what had happened, what had tipped them off to look for him here. The petrol jockey? The traffic officer? Or something else?

Where do you hide from a helicopter at night? Out in the open plains of the Free State?

His eyes searched for the lights of a farmhouse in the dark, hoping for sheds and outbuildings, but there was nothing. Urgency grew in him— he couldn'’t stay here, he had to do something, and then he thought of the river and the bridge, the mighty Modder, it must be somewhere up ahead, and its bridge.

Under the bridge would be a place to shelter, to hide away.

He must get there before they did.

Quinn and Radebe waited for her at the elevator and Quinn said, “Can we talk in your office, ma’am,” and she knew there was a screw loose somewhere because they were grim, especially Radebe— he looked crushed. She walked ahead, opened the office door, went in and waited for them to close the door behind them. They stood, conventions of sitting irrelevant now. The two

began to speak simultaneously, stopped, looked at each other. Radebe held up his hand. “It is my responsibility,” he said to Quinn, and looked at Janina with difficulty his voice monotone, his eyes dead, as if there was no one inside anymore. “Ma’am, due to my neglect, Miriam Nzululwazi escaped from the interview room.” She went cold.

“She reached the exterior fire escape and tried to climb down. She fell. Six floors down. It is my fault, I take full responsibility.”

She drew breath to ask questions, but Radebe forged ahead. “I offer my resignation. I will not be an embarrassment to this department anymore.” He was finished, and the last vestige of dignity left his body with those words.

Eventually Janina said, “She is dead.”

Quinn nodded. “We carried her up to the interview room.”

“How did she get out?”

Radebe stared at the carpet, unseeing. Quinn said, “Vincent thinks he did not lock the door behind him.”

Rage welled up in her, and suspicion. “You think? You think you didn’'t?”

There was no reaction from him, which fueled her rage. She wanted to snarl at him, to punish him; it was too easy to stand lifelessly and say he thought he hadn'’t locked the door— she had to deal with the consequences. She bit back a flood of bitter words.

“You may go, Vincent. I accept your resignation.”

He turned around slowly, but she was not finished. “There will be an inquiry. A disciplinary hearing.”

He nodded.

“See that we know where to find you.”

He looked back at her, and she saw that he had nothing left, nowhere to go.

Dr. Zatopek van Heerden walked her to her car.

She was reluctant to leave; the nearing deadlines called, but she did not want to be finished here.

“I don'’t entirely agree,” she said as they reached the car.

“About what?”

“Good and evil. They are very often absolute concepts.”

She watched him in the moonlight. There was too much thought in him; perhaps he knew too much, as if the ideas and knowledge built up pressure behind his mouth and the outlet was too small for the volume behind. It caused strange expressions to cross his face but found some release in the movements of his body. As if he wrestled to keep it all under control.

Why did he turn her on?

Ten to one he was a bastard, so sure of himself.

Or was he?

She had always been sensual, deep inside. She saw herself that way. But a woman learned with the years that that was only a part of the truth. The other part lay outside, in the way men saw you. And women, who measured and compared and helped put you in your place in the long food chain of love play. You learned to live with that, adjusted your expectations and dreams and fantasies to protect a sensitive heart whose wounds of disappointment healed slowly. Until you were content with the now and then, the sometimes reasonable intensity of stolen moments with a bleached policeman, someone else’s husband. And here tonight, she wished she were tall and slim and blond and beautiful, with big breasts and full lips and a cute bottom, so that this man would propose something improper.

And what did she do?

She challenged him intellectually. She. Who was so average— in everything.

“Name me someone evil,” he said.

“Hitler.”

“Hitler is the stereotypical example,” he said. “But let me ask you: Was he worse than Queen Victoria?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who fed Boer women and children porridge with glass in it? What about the scorched-earth policy? Maybe it was her generals. Maybe she had no idea. Just like P. W. Botha. Denying all knowledge, and therefore good? What of Joseph Stalin? Idi Amin? How do we measure? Are numbers the ultimate measure? Is a sliding scale of the numbers of victims the way we determine good or evil?”

“The question is not who is the worst. The question is, Are there people who are absolutely evil?”

“Let me tell you about Jeffrey Dahmer. The serial murderer. Do you know who he is?”

“The Butcher of Milwaukee.”

“Was he evil?”

“Yes.” But there was less assurance in her voice.

“The literature says that for seven or nine years, I can’t remember, let’s say seven years, Dahmer suppressed the urge to kill. This broken, fucked-up, pathetic wreck of a man kept the nearly inhuman drive bottled up for seven years. Does that make him bad? Or heroic? How many of us know that sort of drive, that intensity? We who can’t even control basic, simple urges like jealousy or envy.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t agree. He murdered. Repeatedly. He did terrible things. It does not matter how long he held out.”

Zatopek smiled at her. “I give in. It is an endless argument. It rests ultimately on so many personal things. I suspect it rests ultimately on the undebatable. Like religion. Norms, values. The way you see yourself, the way you see others and what we are. And what you have experienced.”

She had no answer to that and just stood there. Her face was expressionless, but her body felt too small to contain all she felt.

“Thank you,” she said to break the silence.

“Thobela Mpayipheli is a good man. As good as the world allows him to be. Remember that.”

He was busy putting the R 1150 GS down when he heard the drone of the helicopter coming closer.

He had battled to negotiate the steep bank of the river down toward the water, then he had ridden it up with spinning rear wheel through the grass and bushes directly under the concrete of the bridge. It would be difficult to spot there. Neither the side stand nor the main stand would work there, and he had to lay the bike on its side. It was difficult, the secret was to turn the handles up and hold the end, let your knees do the work, not your back. The big engines of the helicopter were ever nearer. Somehow or other they must have spotted him.

He placed the helmet on the petrol tank, removed the jacket and trousers— they were too lightly colored for the night. He tried to see where the aircraft was, and when he looked around the edge of the bridge, he saw it was only thirty or forty meters away, not far off the ground. He could feel the wind of the great rotors against his face, saw the red and white revolving lights, and saw through the open door of the Oryx four faces, every one beneath an infrared night sight.

Da Costa, Little Joe Moroka, Cupido, and Zwelitini waited till the Oryx landed and the great engines had quieted before jumping down.

The helicopter had landed in a piece of open veld, bordered by the river and road and thorn trees. The first thing they did was to walk to the river, drawn by the ancient magnetism of water. Behind them the main rotor turned ever more slowly and stopped. The night sounds took over, frogs that had been still, insects, somewhere far away a dog barked.

Da Costa walked to the water, opened his fly, and urinated a fat shiny stream in the moonlight.

“Hey, the farmers have to drink that fucking water,” said Cupido.

“The Boers drink brandy and Coke,” said Da Costa, and spat his chewing gum in an impressive arc.

“Not bad,” said Zwelitini. “For a whitey”

“So, can you do better?”

“Naturally. didn’'t you know we Zulus have lips like these so we can spit on whiteys and Xhosas?”

“Put your money where your lips are, Your Highness.”

“Ten rand says I can do better than that.”

“Best of three.”

“Fair enough.”

“Hey what about us?” asked Cupido.

“This is the RU, my bru’. Come and spit with us.”

“Wait,” said Da Costa. “I must radio the captain first. Tell him we are in position.”

“Take your time. The night is young.”

And so they bantered and teased and spat, ignorant of their prey only twelve meters away, unaware that one of them would not see the sun rise.

31.

She told the director in his office of Miriam Nzululwazi’s death and she could see how the news upset him, how the stress of the whole affair slowly crept up on him. The little smile was gone, the compassion and consideration for her was less, the cheerfulness had been swept away.

He is feeling the strain, she thought. The snow-white shirt had lost its gleam; the wrinkles were like cracks in his armor, barely visible.

“And Vincent?” he asked in a weary voice.

“He offered his resignation.”

“You accepted it.”

“Yes, sir.” There was finality in her voice.

The Zulu closed his eyes. He sat motionless, hands on his lap, and for a moment she wondered if he was praying, but she knew it was just his manner. Other people would have gestures or blow out their breath or sag in the shoulders. His way was to shut out the world momentarily.

“There are always casualties in our work,” he said softly.

She did not think he expected her to respond. She waited for the eyes to open, but it did not happen.

“This is the part I don'’t like. It is the part I hate. But it is inevitable.”

The eyes opened. “Vincent.” A hand gesture at last, a vague wave. “He is too idealistic. Too soft and emotional. I will get him a transfer. Somewhere we can channel that dedication.”

She still had no idea what to say, for her opinion differed. Vincent had failed. For her he no longer existed.

“What are we going to do with … Mrs. Nzululwazi?”

With the body? Why didn’'t he say it? She was learning a lot tonight. She saw weakness.

“I will arrange to have her sent to the morgue, sir. No questions asked.”

“And the child?”

She had forgotten about the child.

“Sir, the best would be for family to look after him. We are not… we don'’t have the facilities.”

“That is true,” he said.

“You said over the phone you had some interesting news.”

“Oh. Yes. I have. I had a call from Luke Powell.”

It took a while to sink in. “Luke Powell?” she repeated, mainly to gain time, to make the mental adjustments.

“He wants to meet us. He wants to talk.”

She smiled at the director. “This is unexpected, sir. But not an unpleasant prospect.”

He answered her smile with one of his own. “It is, Janina. He is waiting for us. At the Spur on the waterfront.”

“Oh, he wants to play a home game,” she said, and waited for the director to acknowledge the joke, but he did not.

Allison Healy made two calls before she began to type the lead story for the next day’s Cape Times. The first was to Rassie Erasmus of the Laingsburg police.

“I tried twice this afternoon, but your cell was off,” he said reproachfully “I had an interview with a difficult man,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Three things,” he said. “The thing this morning at Beaufort West. They say the biker held a gun to one soldier’s head, he could have shot them both to hell, but he let them go and said something like ‘I don'’t want to hurt anybody’ ”

“I don'’t want to hurt anybody,” she repeated as she made frantic notes.

“Number two: it’s a rumor but the source is good, an old pal of mine in Pretoria. That brigadier who said over the news that the biker was such a fuckup in the Struggle, you know who I mean, the one in the army?”

“Yes?” She sifted through the documents on her desk for the fax.

Apparently there’s a case pending against him. Sexual harassment or something. They say he’s talking now because the sexual harassment thing against him may just go away if he’s helpful enough.”

“Wait, wait, wait, Rassie.” She found the paper and ran her finger down it. “You say the brigadier, here it is, Lucas Morape, you say he’s lying about this to save his own skin?”

“I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying he’s helping them. And that’s not a fact, it’s a rumor.”

“So what’s the third thing?”

“They’ve cornered the biker in the Free State.”

“Where in the Free State?”

“Petrusburg.”

“Petrusburg?”

“I know, I know, between bugger all and nowhere, but that’s what the guy says.”

“You said they’ve cornered him.”

“Wait, let me explain. This afternoon he went through a speed trap this side of Petrusburg, and the speed cop wrote him a fucking ticket without a clue who he was and then let him go. When the poor fool got back to the office, the bomb burst. They thought he must have slipped through Petrusburg because of all the other BMW motorbikes, but now they’ve blocked all the holes. Apparently, there’s a whole squadron of Rooivalks waiting for him with guided missiles.”

“Rassie, don'’t be ridiculous.”

“Sweetness, have I ever lied to you?”

“No …”

“I tell you like I hear it, Allison. You know that. And I’ve never let you down.”

“That’s true.”

“You owe me.”

“Yes, I owe you, Rassie.” She hung up and shouted at the news editor: “I’m going to need some help on this one, Chief.”

“What do you need?”

“People to make some calls.”

“you’'ve got it,” he said, and crossed over to her desk.

She had already dialed the next number. It was to the house of Miriam Nzululwazi in Guguletu. “I need someone to call Defence Force Media Relations and ask them to confirm or deny the fact that Brigadier Lucas Morape has a sexual harassment case pending.”

The phone rang in Guguletu.

“What brigadier?”

“The guy who put out the press release about how bad the biker really is.”

“Check,” said the news editor.

“And I need someone to call that Kimberley number and ask them to confirm or deny that Thobela Mpayipheli has been trapped near Petrusburg.”

“Good girl,” said the news editor.

The phone still rang.

“And I need someone to try and find a list of child day-care centers in Guguletu and start calling. We need to know if a Pakamile Nzululwazi has been picked up by his mom today.”

“It’s eight-thirty”

“It’s Guguletu, Chief. Not some cozy white suburb where everybody goes home at five o’clock. We might get lucky. Please.”

The phone rang and rang.

Tiger Mazibuko sat in the copilot’s seat of the Oryx. It had landed beside the R.64, halfway between Dealesville and Boshof.

He had the radio headset on, listening to the Rooivalk pilots calling in from each sector they had searched as clear. He marked them off on a chart.

Could the dog be through already, beyond Boshof?

He shook his head.

Impossible. He couldn'’t ride that fast.

They would get him. Even if he got lucky, there was a last resort. Beyond Mafikeng there were only two roads over the Botswana border. Just two. And he would close them off.

But it would probably not be necessary.

At first there was relief. The Oryx had not landed here because they had spotted him. Now there was the frustration of being trapped.

He lay beside the GS under the bridge and dared not move, he dared not make a sound, they were too close, the four romping young soldiers. The copilot had come down, too, and now they were skipping flat stones over the water. The one with the most skips before the stone sank would be the champion.

He had recognized one of the soldiers, the young black fellow. This morning he had held a rifle to his head.

He saw himself in them. Twenty years ago. Young, so very young, boys in men’s bodies, competitI've, idealistic, and so ready to play soldier.

It was always so, through the ages, the children went to war. Van Heerden said it was the age to show off what you had, to make your mark so you could take your place in the hierarchy.

He was even younger when he had left home, seventeen. He could remember it well, in his uncle Senzeni’s car, the nighttime journey, Queenstown, East London, Umtata; they had talked endlessly, without stopping, about the long road that lay ahead. Senzeni had repeated over and over that it was his right and his privilege, that the ancestors would smile on him, the revolution was coming, injustice would be swept away. He remembered, but as he lay here now, he could not recall the fire that burned in his soul. He searched for that zeal, that Sturm und Drang that he had felt, he knew it had been there, but as he tried to taste it, it was only cold ash. He had caught the bus in Umtata; Senzeni had hugged him long and hard and there were tears in his uncle’s eyes and his farewell was “Mayibuye.” It was the last time he had seen him— had Senzeni known? Had he known his own battle would be the more dangerous, working inside the lion’s den, with so much greater risk? Was the desperation of Senzeni’s embrace because of a foreboding that he would die in the war on the home front?

The bus ride to Durban, to Empangeni, was a journey into the unknown; in the earliest hours before dawn, the enormity of that journey ahead became a worm in his heart that brought with it the corruption of insecurity.

Seventeen.

Old enough to go to war, young enough to lie awake in the night and fear, to long for the bed in his room and the reassurance of his father in the rectory, young enough to wonder if he would ever feel his mother’s arms again.

But the sun rose and burned away the fears, it brought bravado, and when he got off at Pongola he was fine. The next night they smuggled him over the border to Swaziland, and the following night he was in Mozambique and his life was irrevocably changed.

And here he was now, using a skill the East Germans had taught him. To lie still, that was the art of the assassin and sniper, to lie motionless and invisible for hours, but he had been a younger man— this one was forty years old, and his body complained. One leg was asleep, the stones under the other hip were sharp and unbearably uncomfortable, the fire in his belly was quenched and his zeal was gone. It was fifteen hundred kilometers south in a small house on the Cape Flats beside the peaceful sleeping body of a tall slim woman, and he smiled to himself in the dark, despite his discomfort, he smiled at the way things change, nothing ever stays the same and it was good, life goes on.

And with the smile came the realization, the suspicion, that this journey would change his life, too. He was on the way to more than Lusaka.

Where would it take him?

How could anyone know?

She worked on the lead story, knowing it was going to be a difficult job tonight.

A squadron of Rooivalk attack helicopters cornered the fugitive motorcyclist Thobela Mpayipheli near the Free State town of Petrusburg late last night amid conflicting reports from the military and unofficial sources.

She read her introductory paragraph. Not bad. But not quite right. The Burger and television and radio could have the same information. And by tomorrow morning he might have been arrested.

She placed the pointer of the computer screen on the end of the paragraph and deleted it. She thought, she rephrased, testing sentences and construction in her mind.

A new drama surrounding the fugitive motorcyclist Thobela Mpayipheli unfolded late last night with the mysterious disappearance of his common-law wife, Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi.

This was where her scoop lay. She went on.

Authorities, including the SAPS and the Office of the Intelligence Ministry, strongly denied that Mrs. Nzululwazi was in government custody Yet colleagues say the Absa employee was apprehended by unidentified law enforcement officials at the Heerengracht branch yesterday

The military reaction on persistent rumors that a squadron of Rooivalk attack helicopters had cornered Mpayipheli near the Free State town of Petrusburg after sunset yesterday was “no comment.”

That’s better, she thought. Two birds with one stone.

“Allison …”

She looked up. A black colleague stood beside her. “I’ve got something.” “Shoot.”

“The kid. I found him. Sort of.” “You did!”

“A woman at the Guguletu Preschool and Child Care Center says he’s a regular there. And the mother never turned up tonight.” “Shit.” “But some sort of government guy did.” The man looked at his notes. “Said his name was Radebe; flashed a card at her and said there had been some sort of accident and he was there to take the kid into his care.”

“Ohmigod. Did he say whom he worked for? Where was he taking the kid?”

“She says the card he showed her just said he was Department of Defence.”

“And she let the kid go?”

“He was the last one left.”

“The last one left?”

“He was the last kid to be fetched, and I think the lady just wanted to go home.”

Vincent Radebe could not tell the boy his mother was dead. He did not know how.

“Your mother has to work late” was the best he could do, in the car. “She asked me to look after you.”

“Do you work with her?”

“You could say that.”

“Do you know Thobela?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Thobela has gone somewhere and it’s our secret.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not going to tell anybody.”

“That’s good.”

“And he’s coming back tomorrow.”

“Yes, he’s coming back tomorrow,” he had said on the way to Green Point, where his flat was. There were moments in the car that his guilt, the heaviness of spirit, became nearly too much for him, but now in McDonald’s opposite the Green Point athletic stadium he had control of himself. He watched Pakamile devour the Big Mac and asked: “Have you got other family here in the Cape?”

“No,” said the boy. There was tomato sauce on his forehead. Radebe took a napkin and wiped it off.

“Nobody?”

“My granny lived in Port Elizabeth, but she’s dead.”

“Have you got uncles or aunts?”

“No. Just Thobela and my mother. Thobela says there are dolphins in Port Elizabeth and he is going to show us at the end of the year.”

“Oh.”

“I know where Lusaka is. Do you?”

“I know.”

“Thobela showed me. In the atlas. Did you know Thobela is the cleverest man in the world?”

32.

Luke Powell’s official title was economic attaché of the American consulate in Cape Town. But his unofficial office, as everyone in the intelligence community was well aware, had little to do with the economy. His actual rank was senior special agent in charge of the CIA in southern Africa, which included everything this side of the Sahara.

In the politically correct terminology of his country, Luke Powell was an African American, a jovial, somewhat plump figure with a round, kind face who wore (to the great mortification of his teenage daughter) large gold-rimmed eyeglasses that had gone out of fashion ten years ago. He was no longer young, there was gray at his temples, and his accent was heavy with the nuances of the Mississippi.

“I’ll have a cheddamelt and fries,” said Powell to the young waiter with the acne problem.

“Excuse me?” said the waiter.

“A cheddamelt steak, well done. And fries.”

The frown had not disappeared from the waiter’s forehead. Every year they were younger.

And dimmer, thought Janina Mentz. “Chips,” she said in explanation.

“You want only chips?” the waiter asked her.

“No, I want only an orange juice. He wants a cheddamelt steak and chips. Americans refer to chips as fries.”

“That’s right. French fries,” said Luke Powell jovially, smiling broadly at the waiter, who was properly confused now, the pen poised over the order book.

“Oh,” said the waiter.

“But they’re not French, they’re American,” said Powell with a measure of pride.

“Oh,” said the waiter.

“I’m just going to have a plate of salad,” said the director.

“Okay,” said the waiter, relieved, and scribbled something down, hovered a moment but as no one said anything more, he left.

“How are y’all?” asked Luke Powell with his smiling mouth.

“Not bad for a developing Third World nation,” said Janina, and opened her handbag, taking out a photograph and handing it to Powell.

“We’ll get right to the point, Mr. Powell,” she said.

“Please,” he said. “Call me Luke.”

The American took the black-and-white photo. He saw the front door of the American consulate in it, and the unmistakable face of Johnny Kleintjes leaving the building.

Ah,” he said.

Ah, indeed,” said Janina.

Powell removed his gold-rimmed eyeglasses and tapped them on the photo.

“We might have something in common on this one?”

“We might,” said the director softly.

He’s good, this American, thought Janina Mentz, considering the lightning adaptation to changes, the poker face.

An innocent six-year-old boy from Guguletu has become a pawn in the nationwide manhunt for Thobela Mpayipheli, the fugitive motorcyclist being sought by intelligence agencies, the military and police.

“Now you’re cooking,” said the news editor, tramping around nervously behind Allison as the deadline loomed.

Pakamile Nzululwazi was taken from a day-care center for preschoolers late last night by an official from the “Department of Defence.” He is the son of Mpayipheli’s common-law wife, Miriam Nzululwazi, who also mysteriously disappeared from the Heerengracht branch of Absa, where she is an employee.

“Cooking with gas,” said the news editor, and she wished he would sit down so she could concentrate in peace.

“What happened in Lusaka?” asked Janina Mentz.

Luke Powell looked at her and then he looked at the director and then he replaced the glasses on his face.

What a strange game this is, thought Janina. He knew they knew and they knew he knew they knew.

“We’re still trying to find out,” said Powell.

“So you got stung?”

Luke Powell’s kind face betrayed nothing of the inner battle, of the humiliation of admitting the superpower’s little African expedition had gone wrong. As always, he was the professional spy.

“Yes, we got stung,” he said evenly.

Now they sat in a circle on the grass, chatting, the four soldiers, the pilot and copilot.

Thobela Mpayipheli was relieved because now they were at a safer distance. He could hear their voices but not their words. He could hear laughter bursting out, so he assumed they were telling jokes. He heard the periodic crackle of the radio that would hush them every time until they were certain the message was not for them.

The adrenaline had left his body slowly, discomfort had grown, but at least he could move now, shift his limbs and work away the stones and grass tufts that bothered him.

But he had a new worry now: How long?

They were obviously waiting for a signal or alarm. And he knew he was the object of that alarm. The problem was, as long as he lay pinned down under this bridge, there would be no call. Which meant they would not leave. Which meant it would be a long night.

But more crucial were the hours lost, hours in which he should be burning up the kilometers to Lusaka. Not yet a crisis, still enough time, but better to have time in the bank, because who knew what lay ahead. There were at least two national borders to cross, and although he had his passport in the bag, he did not have papers for the GS. The African way would be to put a few hundred rand notes in the pages of the passport and hope it would do the trick, but the bribery game took time for haggling and you could run up against the wrong customs man on the wrong day— it was a risk. Better to find a hole in the border fence, or make one and go your way. The Zambezi river, however, was not so easy to cross.

He would need those hours.

And then, of course, the other little problem. As long as it was dark he was safe. But tomorrow morning when the sun came up, this hiding place in the deep shadow of the bridge would be useless.

He had to get out.

He needed a plan.

“There is one thing I have a problem understanding, Luke,” said the director. “Inkululeko, the alleged South African double agent, works for you. So why offer to buy the intelligence off Johnny Kleintjes?”

Powell merely shook his head.

“What do you care if we think we know who he is?” asked the director, and Janina was surprised at the direction the questions had taken. The director had confessed nothing to her of his suspicions.

“I don'’t think that is a sensible line of questioning, Mr. Director,” said Powell.

“I think it is because the smell of rat is fairly strong in this vicinity.”

“I have no comment. I am willing to discuss our mutual Lusaka problem, but that’s it, I’m afraid.”

“It does not make sense, Luke. Why would you take the risk? You knew it was there, from the moment Kleintjes walked into the consulate. You know we have a photographer outside.”

Powell was spared for a moment by the waiter bringing the food— a cheddamelt steak for the American, a plate of chips for Janina, and an orange juice for the director.

“I did not…,” Janina began, and then decided to let it go, it would not help to correct the waiter. She took the orange juice and placed it in front of her.

“I’m going to get some salad,” said the director, and stood up.

“May I have some ketchup?” asked Powell.

“Excuse me?” said the waiter.

“He wants tomato sauce,” Janina said, irritated.

“Oh. Yes. Sure.”

“Why do you do that?” she asked Powell.

“Do what?”

“Use the Americanisms.”

“Oh, just spreading a little culture,” he said.

“Culture?”

He just smiled, the waiter brought the tomato sauce, and he poured a liberal amount over his chips, took his fork and stabbed some and put them in his mouth.

“Great fries,” Powell said, and she watched him eat until the director returned with a full plate of salad.

“Have you any idea who burned you in Lusaka?” Janina asked.

“No, ma’am,” said Powell through a mouthful of steak.

The waiter materialized at the table. “Is everything all right?”

She wanted to snap at the pimple face that all was not right, that she did not order chips, that he’d better not come flirting for a tip but rather leave them in peace, but she did not.

“Steak’s fantastic,” said Powell, and the waiter grinned, relieved, and went away.

“How’s your salad, Mr. Director?” asked Powell.

The director placed his knife and fork precisely and neatly on his plate. “Luke, we have people in place in Zambia. The last thing we need is to run into a team of yours.”

“That would be unfortunate.”

“So you have a team there, too?”

“I am not at liberty to say.”

“You said you were willing to discuss our mutual Lusaka problem.”

“I was hoping you had information for me.”

“All we know is that Thobela Mpayipheli is on his way there with a hard drive full of who knows what. You are the one who knows what happened there. With Johnny.”

“He was, shall we say, intercepted.”

“By parties unknown?”

“Exactly.”

“And you don'’t even have a suspicion?”

“I wouldn'’t say that.”

“Enlighten us.”

“Well, frankly, I suspected that you were the fly in the ointment.”

“It’s not us.”

“Maybe. And maybe not.”

“I give you my personal guarantee that it was not my people,” said Janina Mentz.

“Your personal guarantee,” said Powell, smiling through a mouthful of food.

“It’s going to get crowded in Lusaka, Luke,” said the director.

“Yes, it is.”

“I am asking you, as a personal favor, to stay away.”

“Why, Mr. Director, I did not know South Africa had right-of-way in Lusaka.”

There was a chill in the director’s voice. “You have botched the job already. Now get out of the way.”

“Or what, Mr. Director?”

“Or we will take you out.”

“Like you’re taking out the big, bad BMW biker?” asked Powell, and put another piece of steak loaded with cheese and mushroom in his mouth.

The big, bad BMW biker had his plan thrust upon him.

Fate played an odd card beside the mighty Modder.

33.

Had it not been for the singing, Little Joe Moroka might never have stood up from the ring of jokers. Cupido started the whole thing with one of those teasing statements—“You whiteys can’t…”— and it eventually ended up with a singsong, and that is when the pilot and copilot, white as lilies, burst forth with “A bicycle built for two” in perfect harmony, a cappella, and filled the night with melody.

“Jissis,” said Cupido when they had finished and the rowdy applause had faded. “Where the fuck did you learn to sing like that?”

“The air force has culture,” said the pilot, acting superior.

“In striking contrast with the other branches of the SANDF,” confirmed his colleague.

“All sophisticated people know this.”

“No, seriously,” said Da Costa. “Where does it come from?”

“If you spend enough time in the mess, you discover strange things.”

“It wasn'’t bad,” said Little Joe. “For whitey harmony.”

“Ooh, damning with faint praise,” said the pilot.

“But can the darkie sing?” asked the copilot.

“Of course,” said Little Joe. And that is how it began, because the pilot said, “Prove it,” and Little Joe Moroka smiled at them, white teeth in the darkness. He stretched his throat, tilted his head up as if his vocal cords needed free rein, and then it came, warm and strong, “Shosholoza,” the four notes in pure bravura baritone.

Thobela Mpayipheli could not hear the conversation from under the bridge, but the first song of the two pilots had reached him, and although he did not consider himself a music fanatic, he found pleasure in it despite his position, despite the circumstances.

And now he heard the first phrase of the African song and his ears pricked up, he knew this was something rare.

He heard Little Joe toss the notes into the night like a challenge. He heard two voices join in without knowing whose they were, the song gained meaning and emotion, longing. And then another voice, Cupido’s tenor, round and high as a flute, it hung for a moment above the melody and then dove in. The final ingredient was Zwelitini’s adding his bass softly and carefully so that the four voices formed a velvet foundation for Moroka’s melody, the voices intertwining, dancing up and down the scales. They sang without haste, carried by the restful rhythms of a whole continent, and the night sounds stopped, the Free State veld was silent to receive the song, Africa opened her arms.

The notes filled Thobela, lifted him up from under that bridge and raised him to the patch of stars in his vision; he saw a vision of black and white and brown in a greater perfect harmony, magical possibilities, and the emotion in him was at first small and controllable, but he allowed it to bloom as the music filled his soul.

And another awareness grew— it had been hiding somewhere, waiting for a receptI've spirit, and now his head cleared and he felt for the first time in more than a decade the umbilical drawing him back to his origin, deeper and further, back through his life and the lives of those before him, till he could see all, till he could see himself and know himself.

As the last note died away over the plains, too soon, there was a breathless quiet as if time stood still for a heartbeat.

He discovered the wetness in his eyes, the moisture running in a long silver thread down his cheek, and he was amazed.

The night sounds returned, soft and respectful, as if nature knew she could not compete now.

Wordlessly, Little Joe Moroka stood up from the circle at the helicopter.

From habit he slung the Heckler & Koch UMP submachine pistol over his shoulder and he walked.

No one said a word. They knew.

Little Joe walked down the bank. It had been a bittersweet day and he wanted to cherish the sweet a little longer, taste the emotions a little more. He walked down to the river, stood gazing into the dark water, the HK harmlessly behind his back. He did not want to stand still but walked toward the bridge, thinking of everything, thinking of nothing, the sounds reverberating in his head— damn, it was good, like when he was a kid— aimlessly wandered into the dark under the bridge. He saw the dull gleam of the stainless-steel exhaust pipe, but it did not register because it did not belong, he looked away, looked again, a surreal moment with a tiny wedge of reason, a light coming on in his brain, one step closer, another, the shiny object took shape, lines, tank and wheel and handlebars, and he made a noise, surprised, reached for his weapon, swung it around, but it was too late. Out of the moon shadow came a terrifyingly fast movement, a shoulder hit him for the second time that day, but his finger was inside the trigger guard, his thumb already off the safety, and as his breath exploded over his lips and he tumbled backward, the weapon stuttered out on full automatic, loosing seven of its nineteen rounds.

five hit the concrete and steel, whining away into the night. Two found the right hip of Thobela Mpayipheli.

He felt the 9 mm bullets jerk his body sideways, he felt the immediate shock; he knew he was in trouble but he followed the fall of Moroka, down the steep bank to the river. He heard the shouts of the group at the helicopter but focused on the weapon— Little Joe was winded, Thobela landed on top of him, his hand over the firearm, jerked it, got it loose, his fingers sought the butt, his other forearm against the soldier’s throat, face-to-face, heard the approaching steps, comrades shouting questions, pressed the barrel of the HK against Moroka’s cheek.

“I don'’t want to kill you,” he said.

“Joe?” called Da Costa from above.

Moroka struggled. The barrel pressed harder, the weight of the fugitive heavy on him; the man hissed, “Shhh,” in his face, and Little Joe submitted because where could the fucker go, there were six of them against one.

“Joe?”

Mpayipheli rolled off Moroka, moved around behind him, pulled him up by the collar to use him as a shield.

“Let’s all stay calm,” said Thobela. The adrenaline made the world move in slow motion. His hip was wet, blood running in a stream down his leg.

“Jissis,” said Cupido above. They could see now. Little Joe with the gun to his head, the big fucker behind him.

“Put down your weapons,” said Mpayipheli. The shock of the two 9 mm rounds combined with the chemistry of his body to make him shake.

They just stood there.

“Shoot him,” said Little Joe.

“No one is getting hurt,” said Thobela.

“Kill the dog,” said Little Joe.

“Wait,” said Da Costa.

“Put it down,” said Mpayipheli.

“Please, man, shoot him,” Little Joe pleaded. He could not face Tiger Mazibuko’s anger again, no more humiliation. He writhed and struggled in the grip of the fugitive and then Thobela Mpayipheli hit him with the butt of the HK where the nerves bunch between back and head, and his knees sagged, but the arm locked around his throat and held him up.

“I will count to ten,” said Mpayipheli, “and then all the weapons will be on the ground,” and his voice sounded hoarse and strange and distant, a desperate man. His mind was on the helicopter: Where was the pilot? Where were the men who could use the radio to send a warning?

They put their weapons down, Da Costa and Zwelitini and Cupido.

“Where are the other two?”

Da Costa looked around, betraying their position.

“Get them here. Now,” said Mpayipheli.

“Just stay calm,” said Da Costa.

Little Joe was beginning to come around and started wriggling under his arm. “I am calm, but if those two don'’t get here now …”

“Captain,” Da Costa called over his shoulder.

No answer.

He’s using the radio, Mpayipheli knew; he was calling in reinforcements.

“One, two, three …”

“Captain.” There was panic in Da Costa’s shout.

“Four, five, six …”

“Shit, Captain, he’s going to shoot him.”

“I will. Seven, eight…”

“Okay, okay,” said the pilot as he and his colleague walked over the rim of the riverbank with their hands up.

“Stand away from the weapons,” said Mpayipheli, and they all moved back a few steps. He shoved Little Joe up the bank so he could see the helicopter better. The soldier was unsteady on his feet but still mumbled, “Shoot him,” and Mpayipheli said, “You don'’t want me to hit you again,” and the mumbling stopped.

They stood, the fugitive with his hostage, the other five in a bunch.

In his head a clock ticked.

Had the pilot got a message out? How much blood had he lost? When would he feel the light-headedness, the loss of concentration, and the loss of control?

“Listen carefully,” he said. “We have a bad situation. don'’t make it worse.”

No response.

“Is his name Joe?”

Da Costa was the one to nod.

He felt the armor of the Kevlar vest under Little Joe’s shirt. He chose his words carefully. “The first shot goes in Joe’s shoulder. The second in his leg. You understand?”

They did not answer.

“You three”— he gestured with the barrel—“get the motorbike.”

They just stood there.

“Hurry up,” he said, and pressed the barrel against Little Joe’s shoulder joint.

The soldiers moved down to the bottom of the bridge.

“You haven’t got a chance,” said the pilot, and Thobela knew then for sure the man had used the radio.

“You have thirty seconds!” he screamed at the three at the motorbike. “You”— he motioned to the copilot—“fetch the helmet and my suit. They are over there. And if I think you are wasting time …”

The man’s eyes were wide; he jogged off, past the men struggling to push the motorbike up the incline.

“Help them to get it in the helicopter,” he said to the pilot.

“You’re fucking insane, man. I’m not flying you anywhere,” and that is when Little Joe suddenly jerked out of his grasp with a drop and a twist of the shoulders and dove toward the pile of weapons on the ground. Thobela followed him with the Heckler’s barrel as if in slow motion, saw him grab a machine pistol, roll over, fingers working the mechanisms with consummate skill. He saw the barrel turn toward him, saw everyone else frozen, and he said softly to himself, once, “No,” and then his finger pressed the trigger as the choice was no longer to shoot or not, but to live, to survI've. The shots cracked; he aimed for the bulletproof vest, and Little Joe jerked backward, Mpayipheli moved toward Little Joe, right leg caving in (how much damage?), and jerked the weapon out of the young soldier’s hands, threw his own down, looked up. The others still stood transfixed; he looked down, three shots were harmlessly to the chest, and one was in the neck, ugly, blood spurting.

He took a deep breath; he must control himself. And them.

“He needs to get to the hospital. You determine how fast,” he said. “Load the bike.”

They were shocked now.

“Move. He will die.”

Little Joe groaned.

The GS was at the open door of the Oryx.

“Help them,” he said to the pilot.

“don'’t shoot,” said the copilot, coming up the bank with the helmet and clothes.

“Put it in.”

The four battled with the heavy machine, but the adrenaline in their arteries helped them lift first the front and then the back.

“Do you have first aid equipment?”

Cupido nodded.

“Put a pressure bandage on his neck. Tight.”

He walked to the Oryx, his steps wobbly, the pain in his hip throbbing and sharp, demanding. He knew he was nearly out of time.

“We must go,” he said, looking at the two air force pilots.

34.

In the second Oryx, which stood beside the R.64, halfway between Dealesville and Boshof, Captain Tiger Mazibuko was the one who heard the emergency signal. “Mayday Mayday Mayday. They are shooting here below, I think we’ve found him…”

And then it was quiet.

First, he shouted outside where the helicopter crew stood around, smoking and chatting to the other members of Team Alpha. “Come!” he screamed, and then over the radio: “Where are you? Come in. Where are you?” But there was silence and his heart began to race and frustration was the bellows of his rage.

“What?” said the pilot, now beside him.

“They’ve found him; someone called in Mayday,” he said. “Come in, Mayday, where are you, who signaled?”

The officer had his headset on in the control cabin.

“Rooivalk One to Oryx, we heard it, too.”

“Who was it?” asked Mazibuko.

“Sounded like Kotze, over.”

“Who the fuck is Kotze?”

“The pilot of the other Oryx.”

“Come!” yelled Tiger Mazibuko, but his pilot had the engines running already. “I want all the Rooivalks, too,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Do you know where Kotze and them are?”

“NegatI've, Oryx, over.”

“Fuck,” said Mazibuko, struggling with the map in the dark cabin.

“Show me,” said the copilot. “Then I’ll give the coordinates.”

“Here.” He jabbed the map with his index finger. “Right here.”

They tore over the landscape and the pilot shouted, “Where?” and he shouted back above the racket, “Botswana,” and the captain shook his head.

“I can’t cross the border.”

“You can. If we keep low, the radar won’t pick us up.”

“What?”

The pain in his hip was enormous, throbbing; his trousers were soaked in blood. He had to have a look. But there were more urgent things.

“I want a headset,” he said, and gestured.

The copilot got it, hands trembling and eyes on the HK in Mpayipheli’s hands. He got earphones and passed them over, plugging the wire in somewhere. Hissing, voices, the Rooivalks were talking to each other.

“Tell them about the wounded man,” said Thobela Mpayipheli in the microphone to the copilot, “and nothing else. Understand?”

The man nodded.

Thobela searched the instrument panel for the compass. He knew Lobatse was north, almost directly north. “Where’s your compass?”

“Here,” said the pilot.

“You lie.”

Their eyes met, the pilot assessing him, glancing down at his wounds and his trembling hands, like a predator eyeing its prey. Mpayipheli listened while the copilot called in the news about the wounded soldier. “Oryx Two to Oryx One, we have a casualty, repeat, we have a casualty, we need help immediately.”

“Where are you, Oryx Two?” Mpayipheli recognized the voice. It was the one from this morning, the crazy guy.

“That’s enough,” he said to the copilot, who nodded enthusiastically.

“Listen carefully,” he said to the pilot. “I need only one pilot. You saw what happened to the soldier. Do you want me to shoot your partner, too?”

The man shook his head. No.

“I want to see the compass. And I want to see the ground, all the time, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

The pilot touched the top of the instrument. 270, it read.

“Do you think I am a stupid kaffir?”

Voices talked on the radio, Mazibuko’s incessantly calling, “Oryx Two, come in. Oryx One to Oryx Two, come in.” The pilot said nothing.

“You have ten seconds to turn north.”

A moment of hesitation, then the pilot turned the helicopter, 280, 290, 300, 310, 320, the instrument swung under its cover, white letters on a black background, 330,340, 350,355.

“Keep it there.”

He must take care of his wounds. Stop the bleeding. He must drink something, the thirst made his mouth like chalk, he had to stay awake, he must stay ready.

“How long to Lobatse?”

“Hour, hour and a quarter.”

The atmosphere in the Ops Room was morbid.

Janina Mentz sat at the big table, trying to keep the tension off her face. They were listening to the cacophony over the radios.

It is chaos up there,

she thought, chaos everywhere, the meeting with the American was chaos, the ride back with the director was not good, and what she found back here was a demoralized team.

Everyone knew of the death of Miriam Nzululwazi now, everyone knew Radebe had gone, everyone knew one of the RU members was badly wounded, and the fugitive— no one knew where the fugitive was.

Chaos. And she had no idea what to do.

In the car she had tried to talk to the director, but there was distance between them, a breach of confidence, and she couldn'’t understand it. Why had his circle of suspicion extended to include her? Or was it a case of kill the bearer of bad news?

Or did the director see all this chaos as a threat to his career? Was he thinking ahead, to explaining this mess to the minister?

She heard the first Rooivalk arriving at the wounded soldier.

She heard Da Costa report in over the radio of the Rooivalk.

Thobela Mpayipheli had hijacked the Oryx.

Her heart sank.

She heard Tiger Mazibuko’s reaction, the cursing tirade.

He is not the right man for the situation,

she thought

.

Rage would not help now. She would have to step in. She was about to get up when she heard Mazibuko call the other Rooivalks. “The dog is going to Botswana. You must stop him. Get that Oryx.”

One by one, the attack helicopters confirmed their new bearings.

What are you thinking, Tiger? Are we going to shoot down the Oryx, with our people and all?

A terrible choice.

“And get Little Joe to a hospital,” said Mazibuko over the radio.

“Too late, Captain,” said Da Costa.

“What?” said Mazibuko.

“He’s dead, Captain.”

For the first time, the ether was still.

Vincent Radebe looked at the sleeping child in the sitting room of his Sea Point flat. He had made up a bed on the sofa and put the TV on, skipping through the channels for something suitable.

“I don'’t want to watch TV” said Pakamile, but he couldn'’t keep his eyes off the screen.

“Why not?”

“I don'’t want to go stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“Thobela says it makes people stupid. He says if you want to be clever, you must read.”

“He’s right. But it’s too much television that makes you stupid. We are just going to watch a little bit.”

Please, Lord,

he prayed silently

let me keep the child occupied, let him go to sleep so I can think.

“Just a little?”

“Just until you go to sleep.”

“That must be okay.”

“I promise you it will be okay.”

But what do you let a child watch?

And there, on one of the SABC channels, was a series on a pride of lions in the Kalahari and he said, “This will make you clever, too, because it’s about nature,” and Pakamile nodded happily and rearranged himself. Vincent had watched as sleep drew an invisible veil over the boy’s face, slowly and softly, till the eyes fell shut.

Radebe switched off the TV and the sitting-room light. The one in the open-plan kitchen he left on so the child would not be bewildered if he woke up in the night. He stood on the balcony and thought, because it was a horrible mess.

He would have to tell him his mother was dead.

Sometime or other. It was not right to lie to him.

He had to get the boy clothes. And a toothbrush.

They couldn'’t stay here; Mentz would find out that he had collected the child, and she would take him away to that little room.

Where could they go?

Family was no good. That was the first place Mentz would look. Friends were also dangerous.

So where?

Allison Healy lit a cigarette in her car before turning the key. She inhaled the smoke and blew a stream at the windshield, watching the smoke dissipate against it.

A long day. A strange day.

Woke up and looked for a story and found a complication.

Moments of truth. Tonight she had wanted to write another intro.

Thobela Mpayipheli, the fugitive motorcyclist, is a former hit man for the KGB.

No.

Thobela Mpayipheli, the man the media had dubbed the “big, bad BMW biker,” is a former KGB assassin.

She had broken off-the-record agreements before.

It was a nebulous agreement at best. People didn’'t always mean what they said. The source talked and talked and talked, and somewhere along the way said, “You can’t write that,” and in the end no one remembered what was on the record and what was off. Of course, the really juicy bits, the real news, lay in those areas. Some people used it as a “cover my ass” mechanism but actually wanted you to write it as long as they could protest, “I told her it was off the record.”

Sometimes you wrote regardless.

Sometimes you trespassed knowingly, weighing up the consequences, and

publish and be damned

and if people were angry— they would get over it, because they needed you, you were the media. With others it didn’'t matter— let them be angry, they got what they deserved.

Tonight the temptation was exceedingly strong.

What had prevented her?

She took out her cell phone. She felt her heart bump in her chest.

She searched for the number under receiveD CALLS. Pressed the button and put the phone to her ear.

Three, four, five rings. “Van Heerden.”

“There is something you said that I don'’t understand.”

He did not answer immediately. In the silence there was meaning.

“Where are you?”

“On the way home.”

“Where do you live?”

She gave him the address.

“I’ll be there in half an hour.”

She put the phone in her bag and pulled deeply on the cigarette.

Dear God, what am I doing?

35.

It was difficult to watch the compass, to gauge their altitude, keep an eye on the crew, and get the sports bag out of the luggage case while juggling the HK in one hand.

He did it step-by-step, aware of the need to concentrate. Nothing need happen quickly, he just had to stay alert and monitor all the variables. He placed the bag next to him.

He pulled up the shirt to get at the wound. It did not look good.

He heard the first Rooivalk arriving at the scene, listened to the reports. Heard the Rooivalk’s orders to come after them.

They knew he was going to Botswana.

It was the voice from this morning.

My name is Captain Tiger Mazibuko. And I am talking to a dead man.

Not yet, Captain Mazibuko. Not yet.

Mazibuko barking out,

And get Little Joe to a hospital.

Too late, Captain.

What?

He’s dead, Captain.

It was the pilot who looked around, disgusted at the Xhosa’s presence here. The injustice registered with Thobela, but that was irrelevant now.

But his status

was

relevant. And that had changed dramatically. From illegal courier, in their perspective, to murderer. Although it was in self-defense, they would not see it like that.

He looked down at the wound.

He must concentrate on survival.

Now more than ever.

He could see now that it was more than one bullet: one had taken a chunk of flesh out just below the hip bone, the other had gone in and out on a skewed trajectory— it must have struck the hip bone. Blood was thick over the wounds. He pulled a shirt from the bag and began to clean it up, first looking up to see the copilot watching him, seeing the wounds, the man was pale. Checked the compass, looked outside, below he could see the landscape flashing by in the moonlight.

He looked around the interior. Some of the soldiers’ gear had been left inside: backpacks, two metal trunks, a paperback. He pushed the backpacks around with his left foot. Got hold of two water bottles and loosened them from the packs.

“I need bandages,” he said. The copilot pointed. At the back was a metal case with a red cross painted on it screwed to the body of the helicopter. Sealed.

He stood up and unplugged the headset. He broke the seal of the case and opened it. The contents were old, but there were bandages, painkillers, ointment, antiseptic, syringes of drugs he did not recognize, everything in a removable canvas bag. He took it out and moved back to his seat, replaced the headset, went through the checklist of crew, altitude, and direction. He placed the bandages aside, trying to make out the labels on the tubes of ointment and packets of pills in the poor light. He put what he needed to one side.

He had never been wounded before.

The physical reaction was new to him; he vaguely recalled the expected pathology: there would be shock, tremors and dizziness, then the pain, fatigue, the dangers of blood loss, thirst, faint-ness, poor concentration. The important thing was to stop the bleeding and take in enough water; dehydration was the big enemy.

He heard his mother’s voice in his head. He was fourteen, they were playing by the river, chasing iguanas, and the sharp edge of a reed had sliced open his leg like a knife. At first all he felt was the stinging. When he looked down, there was a deep wound to the bone, he could see it, above the kneecap, pure white against the dark skin, he could see the blood that instantaneously began seeping from all sides like soldiers charging the front lines. “Look,” he said proudly to his friends, hands around the leg, the wound long and very impressive, “I’m going home, so long,” limping back to his mother, watching the progression of blood down his leg with detached curiosity as if it wasn'’t his. His mother was in the kitchen, he needed to say nothing, only grinned. She had a shock—“Thobela,” her cry of worry. She let him sit on the edge of the bath and with soft hands and clicking tongue disinfected the wound with snow-white cotton balls, the smell of Dettol, the sting, the bandages and Band-Aid, his mother’s voice, soothing, loving, caressing hands— the longing welled up in him, for her, for that carefree time, for his father. He jerked back to the present, the compass was still at 355.

He got to his feet, pressed the HK against the copilot’s neck. “Those helicopters. How fast can they fly?”

“Aah … uum …”

“How fast?” And he jabbed the weapon into the man’s cheek.

About two-eighty” said the pilot.

And how fast are we going?”

“One-sixty.”

“Can’t we go faster?”

“No,” said the pilot. “We can’t go faster.” Unconvincingly Are you lying to me?”

“Look at the fucking aircraft. Does it look like a greyhound to you?”

He sagged back to his seat.

The man was lying. But what could he do about it?

They wouldn'’t make it; the border was too far.

What would the Rooivalks do when they intercepted?

He unclipped another water bottle from one of the rucksacks and opened the cap, brought it to his lips and drank deeply. The water tasted of copper, strange on his tongue, but he gulped greedily, swallowing plenty. How the bottle shook in his big hand— hell— he trembled, trembled. He breathed in slowly, slowly breathed out. If he could just make it to Botswana. Then he had a chance.

He began to clean the wound slowly and meticulously.

Because if he were still Umzingeli, there would be at least four dead bodies for you to explain.

That is what the minister of water affairs and forestry had said, and now there was one body and Janina Mentz wondered if the gods had conspired against her. For what were the odds that the perfect operation, so well planned and seamlessly executed would draw in a retired assassin?

And in the moment of self-pity she found the truth. The foundation of reason that she could build upon.

It was not by chance.

Johnny Kleintjes had instructed his daughter to involve Tho-bela Mpayipheli if something happened to him. Was it a premonition? Did the old man expect things to go wrong? Or was he playing some other game? Someone had known about the whole thing, someone had waited in Lusaka and taken the CIA out of the game, and the question, the first big question was, Who?

The possibilities, this is what drove her out of her head, the multiple possibilities. It could be this own country’s National Intelligence Agency, it could be the Secret Service, or Military Intelligence— the rivalry, the spite, and corruption were tragic in their extent.

The contents of the hard drive was the second big question, because that was a clue to the who.

If Johnny Kleintjes had contacted someone else … an old colleague now at the NIA or SS or MI, said this is what the people at PIU are planning … But I have other data.

Impossible.

Because then this thing of the phone calls to Monica Kleintjes, the threats to kill Johnny Kleintjes, would never have happened. Why complicate it so? Why endanger his own daughter?

Johnny could just have given copies of the data to the NIA.

It had to be someone else.

She had recruited Kleintjes, she had explained the operation to him, she had seen his eagerness, estimated his loyalty and patriotism. They had watched him in those weeks, listened to his calls and followed him, knew what he did, where he was. It made no sense. Kleintjes could not be the leak.

Where then? With the CIA?

Perhaps a year or two ago, but not since September

n

. The Americans had retreated into the

laager;

they played a serious, pitiless game, cards close to the vest. Took no chances.

Where was the leak?

Here she was the only one who knew.

Here. Quinn and his teams had trailed Kleintjes and tapped his phone without being briefed with the whole picture. Only she knew the whole story. Everything.

Who? Who, who, who?

Her cell phone rang and she saw that it was Tiger. She did not want to speak to him right now.

“Tiger?”

“Ma’am, he’s on the way …”

“Not now, Tiger, I’ll call you back.”

“Ma’am …” Desperation, she could understand that. One of his men was dead, murder burned in his heart, someone had to pay. First she had to think; she pressed the button, cutting him off.

When she entered the Ops Room she felt despair. She no longer felt up to the task. She recognized the feelings of self-pity. The director was the source of that. He had withdrawn his support and trust, and now she felt suddenly alone and aware of her lack of experience. She was a planner, a strategist, and a manipulator. Her skill was in organization, not crisis management. Not violence and guns and helicopters.

But the fact remained, this was not about the crisis of the fugitive and a dead soldier.

don'’t get caught up in the drama. Maintain perspective. Think. Reason, let her strong points count.

The hard drive.

Johnny Kleintjes had done what any player with a lifetime of sanctioned fraud behind him would do: left an escape route, a bit of insurance. Thobela Mpayipheli was that insurance, but Kleintjes had not even left the man’s proper address or telephone number with Monica— it was out-of-date. If he really expected trouble, he would have taken more trouble, probably gone to see Mpayipheli himself. At least made sure of where his old friend was.

No, it was out of habit, not foreknowledge.

The same went for the hard drive. It was a piece of insurance from the days when he was coordinator for the amalgamation of the awful stuff. Old forgotten intelligence on political leaders’ sexual preferences and suspected traitors and double agents. Negligible. Irrelevant, just something that Kleintjes had thought of when he was knee-deep in trouble, a way of using his insurance. don'’t focus on the hard drive; don'’t be misled by it. She felt relief growing, because she knew she was right.

But she need not disregard it; she could play more than one game.

She must concentrate on Lusaka. She must find out who was holding Johnny Kleintjes. If she knew that, she would know where the leak was, and in that knowledge lay the real power.

Forget the director. Forget Thobela Mpayipheli. Focus.

“Quinn,” she called out. He sat hunched over his panel and jumped when he heard his name.

“Rahjev.”

“Ma’am?”

“don'’t look so depressed. Come, walk with me.” There was strength in her voice and they heard it. They looked to her, all of them.

By the time he knocked on the door, Allison had showered, dressed, put on music, agonized over the brightness of the lights, lit a cigarette, and sat down in her chair in the sitting room, trying to attain a measure of calm.

But the minute she heard the soft knock, she lost it.

Janina Mentz walked in the middle, the two men flanking her— Quinn, the brown man, lean and athletic; Rajkumar impossibly fat— a pair of unmatched bookends. They walked down Wale Street without speaking, around the corner at the church toward the Supreme Court. The only sound was Rajkumar’s gasping as he struggled to keep up. The two men knew she had got them out to avoid listening ears. As participants in the plot, they accepted her lead.

They crossed Queen Victoria and went into the Botanical Gardens, now dark and full of shadows of historic trees and shrubs, the pigeons and squirrels quiet. She had brought her children here with her ex-husband on days of bright sunshine, but even in daylight the gardens whispered, the dark corners created small oases of complicity and secretiveness. She walked to one of the wooden benches, looked at the lights of Parliament on the other side, and the homeless figure of a

bergie

on the grass.

Ironic.

“Good,” she said as they sat. “Let me tell you how things stand.”

Zatopek van Heerden had brought wine that he opened and poured into the glasses she provided.

They were uneasy with each other, their roles now so different from that afternoon, the awareness they shared was avoided, sidestepped, ignored like a social disease.

“What is it that you don'’t understand?” he asked as they sat.

“You talked of genetic fitness indicators.”

“Oh. That.”

He studied his glass, the red wine glowing between his hands. Then he looked up and she saw he wanted her to say something else, to open a door for him, and she could not help herself, she asked the question of her fears. “Are you involved?” Realized that was not clear enough. “With someone?”

36.

No,” he said, and the corners of his mouth turned up. “What?” she asked unnecessarily, because she knew. “The difference between us. Between man and woman. For me it is still… enigmatic.”

She smiled with him.

He looked at his glass as she spoke, his voice quiet. “How many times in one person’s life will you know that the attraction is mutual? In equal measure?”

“I don'’t know.”

“Too few,” he said.

“And I need to know if there is someone else.”

He shrugged. “I understand.”

“doesn'’t it matter to you?”

“Not now. Later. Definitely later.”

“Odd,” she said, drawing on her cigarette, taking a swallow of wine, waiting. He stood up, placed the glass on the coffee table, and went to her. She waited a moment, then bent down to stub out her cigarette.

Tiger Mazibuko sat in the Oryx, alone. Outside at the bridge where Little Joe died, the men stood waiting, but he did not think of them. He had the charts with him, maps of Botswana. He hummed softly as his fingers ran over them, an unrecognizable, monotonous refrain, busy, busy when the phone rang. He knew who it would be.

“What I really want to do,” he said straightaway, “is to blow the fucker out of the sky with a missile, preferably this side of the border.” His voice was easy, his choice of words deliberate. “But I know that’s not an option.”

“That’s right,” said Janina Mentz.

“I take it we are not going to call in the help of our neighbors.”

“Still right.”

“National pride and the small problem of sensitive data in strange hands.”

“Yes.”

“I want to ambush him, ma’am.”

“Tiger, that’s not necessary.”

“What do you mean, ‘not necessary’?”

“This line is not secure, take my word for it. Priorities have changed.”

He nearly lost it just then, the rage pushed up from below like lava.

Priorities have changed:

jissis, he had lost a man, he was humiliated and sent from pillar to post, he had endured the chaos and the fucking lack of professionalism, and now someone in a fucking office had changed the fucking priorities. It wanted to explode out violently but he held it in, choked it back, because he had to.

“Are you there?”

“I am here. Ma’am, I know what route he will use.”

“And?”

“He’s going to Kazungula.”

“Kazungula?”

“On the Zambian border. He won’t go through Zimbabwe, too many border posts, too much trouble. I know this.”

“It doesn'’t help us. That’s in Botswana. Even if it comes from the top, official channels will take too long.”

“I didn’'t have anything official in mind.”

“No, Tiger.”

“Ma’am, he’s wounded. The way Da Costa talks—”

“Wounded, you say?”

“Yes. Da Costa says it’s serious, his stomach or his leg. Little Joe got some rounds off before he was shot. It will slow him down. He has to rest. And drink. That gives us time.”

“Tiger …”

“Ma’am, just me. Alone. I can be in Ellisras in two hours. In three hours at Mahalapye. All I need is a vehicle… .”

“Tiger …”

“It gives you an extra option.” He played his trump card.

She vacillated and he saw opportunity in that. “I swear I will keep a low profile. No international incident. I swear.”

Still she hesitated and he drew breath to say more but stopped. Fuck her, he would not plead.

“On your own?”

“Yes. In every way.”

“Without backup and communications and official approval?”

“Yes.” He had her; he knew he had her. “Just a car. That’s all I ask.”

“Oryx Two, this is Rooivalk Three. We are two hundred meters behind you with missiles locked in. Land, please, there’s lots of places down below.”

He had swallowed the painkillers with lukewarm water, but they had not kicked in yet. The wound was clean now, the bandage stretched tight around his middle, pulling heavily on his side. It was still bleeding in there, he did not know how to stop it, hoped it would just happen. The pilot asked, “What now?”

“Stay on course.”

“Oryx Two, this is Rooivalk Three. Confirm contact, please.”

“How far are we from the Botswana border?”

The two officers merely stared ahead. He cursed quietly stood up, feeling the wounds— Lord, he should keep still. He hit the copilot against the forehead with the barrel of the Heckler, drew blood, and shook the man who raised his hands protectively. “I am tired of this.”

“Seventy kilometers,” said the pilot hurriedly.

Mpayipheli checked his watch. It could be true. Another half an hour.

“Oryx Two, this is Rooivalk Three. We have you in our sights, you have ninety seconds to respond.”

“They are going to shoot us down,” said the copilot. He had wiped his forehead and was looking at the blood on his hand now, then at Mpayipheli, like a faithful dog that has been kicked.

“They won’t,” he said. “How do you know?”

“Sixty seconds, Oryx Two, we have permission to fire.”

“I’m going down,” said the pilot with fear.

“You will not land,” said Thobela Mpayipheli, the HK against the copilot’s neck.

“Do you want to die?”

“They won’t fire.”

“You can’t say that.”

“If you do anything but fly straight, I will shoot off your friend’s head.”

“Please, no,” said the copilot, his eyes screwed shut.

“Thirty seconds, Oryx Two.”

“You’re fucking crazy, man,” said the pilot.

“Stay calm.”

The copilot made a strangled noise.

“Oryx Two, fifteen seconds before missile launch, confirm instruction, I know you can hear me.”

Two innocent lives and a helicopter of millions of rand, they would not shoot, they would not shoot, they would have heard an official order over the radio, this kind of decision was not made at the operational level, they could not shoot. The seconds ticked by, they waited for the impact, all three rigid, instinctively bracing for the bang, for a sign, waiting. They heard the Rooivalk pilot. “Fuck,” he said.

Relief.

“you’'ve got balls, you black bastard, I’ll give you that,” said the Rooivalk pilot.

37.

He made the Oryx land near a road sign to make sure they were over the border. The Rooivalks had turned back; the main route between Lobatse and Gaborone was quiet and the night warm. He made the men lie facedown on the blacktop while he struggled mightily to get the big GS up from the floor of the helicopter. There was no help for it, he would have to start it and ride it out, hoping not to fall in the jump from aircraft to the ground half a meter down. He had a slight fever leaving a thin transparent membrane between him and reality. The painkillers had kicked in and he moved studiously, every step ticked off against a checklist in his mind, lest he forget something.

If he fell, they would leap up— the pilot was the danger, the officer’s hate for him was like a beacon.

He got the motorbike on the side stand, checked that the sports bag was in the luggage case, locked. What was he forgetting? He mounted and pressed the starter; the engine turned and turned but would not take.

He pressed the choke up and tried again. This time it took with a roar and a shudder. He lifted the side stand with a foot and turned the steering. He couldn'’t ride out slowly; he would accelerate powerfully and let momentum carry him out. The helicopter was beside the road, engines still on, the blades sweeping up a whirlwind around the resting bird. He must be sure the GS’s engine was sufficiently warmed up enough and he revved.

The pilot lay watching with an expressionless face.

He drew a breath, now or never, clutch in, first gear, turned the throttle, and released the clutch. The GS shot forward and out, the front wheel dropped, hit the ground, shocks banging, the force shooting up his arms and making him lose balance, the rear wheel came down and with the throttle still wide open he shot forward, straight across the road, braked to stop going into the veld and came to a halt. His heart pounded— dear Lord— he looked around, the pilot had leaped up and was running to the helicopter, the Heckler lay there inside, that’s what his head had been trying to tell him— don'’t forget the machine pistol— but now it was too late, there was only one option. He rode as fast as the motorbike would accelerate, lying flat without looking back, a smaller target, ears pricked, second, third, fourth gear, something struck the bike, fifth, 160 kilometers per hour, still accelerating— what had the pilot hit?

Then he knew he was out of range and kept the speed there, and he wondered if the pilot’s hate was great enough to follow him with the Oryx.

Janina Mentz carried out her plan meticulously.

She fetched the director from his office; she could see he was tired now, his whole body expressed it. “I want to talk, sir, but not here.”

He nodded and stood up, taking his jacket from where it hung neatly on a hanger, took his time putting it on, and then held the door for her. They rode down in the elevator and left the building, he a courteous step behind her. She led him up Long Street, knowing the Long Street Café would be open still. This part of the city was still alive, young people, tourists with backpacks, Rikki taxis, scooters. Nightclub music pounded from an upper floor. The director was short and bowed beside her, and she was once again conscious of the spectacle they presented— what would people think seeing the white woman in a business suit walking with the little hunchbacked black man?

There was an open table at the back near the cake display.

He held the chair for her, and for an instant she felt his courtesy irritating, she wanted to be accepted or rejected, not live in this no-man’s-land.

He did not look at the menu. “You believe we are being bugged?”

“Sir, I have considered all the evidence, and somewhere there is a leak. With us, or with Luke Powell.”

“And you don'’t believe it is with them?”

“It’s not impossible, just improbable.”

“What has happened to our Johnny the communist theory?”

“The more I think about it, the less it makes sense.”

“Why, Janina?”

“He would not endanger his own daughter. He would not leave an outdated address and phone number for Mpayipheli with her. If he wanted to threaten the CIA, there are other ways. To tell the truth, nothing about it makes sense.”

“I see.”

“You still think it’s Johnny?”

“I no longer know what to think.” The weariness was undisguised in his voice, and she saw him with greater depth then. What was he? Somewhere on the shady side of fifty he carried the burden of the invisible, endless decades of intrigue behind him. While a young waitress with dark secret eyes took their order, she studied him. Did he once have dreams and ambitions for greater things? Had he seen himself as material for the inner circle, to wear the head ring of the stalwart? Was he on the verge of that once in his wanderings during the Struggle? He was a clever man whose potential they would have recognized. What had held him back, kept him out, so that now he sat here, a worn-out old man holding on to his status as senior civil servant with titles and white silk shirts?

He misinterpreted her examination. “Do you really suspect me, Janina?”

She sighed deeply. “Sir …”

There was compassion in the set of her mouth.

“I had to consider it.”

“And what was your conclusion?”

“Another improbable.”

“Why?”

All you could know was that Johnny Kleintjes was one of a large number of people we were keeping tabs on. I was the only one who knew why.”

He nodded slowly, without satisfaction; he knew that would be the result. “That goes for all of us, Janina.”

“That is what puzzles me.”

“Then the leak is not with us.”

“I don'’t know. …”

“Unless, of course, it is you.”

“That’s true. Unless I am the one.”

“And that couldn'’t be, Janina.”

“Sir, let me speak frankly. I feel our relationship has altered.”

The coffee arrived, and her words hung in the air until the waitress left.

“Earlier today when we met Powell, after that,” she said.

He took his time, tore open the sugar packet, and stirred the sugar into his coffee. He looked up at her. “I don'’t know whom to trust anymore, Janina.”

“Why, sir? What has changed?”

He brought the cup to his lips, testing the heat carefully, sipped and replaced the porcelain cup carefully back in the saucer. “I don'’t have an empirical answer to that. I can’t set out the points one by one. It is a feeling, Janina, and I am sorry that you felt it includes you, too, because that is not necessarily the case.”

“A feeling?”

“That I am being led down the garden path.”

When Thobela dismounted from the R1150 GS before the Livingstone Hotel in Gaborone, he could barely stand. At first he held on to the saddle with a thousand stars swimming in his vision, bending over it until balance and sight returned.

When he moved around the bike, he saw the damage for the first time.

The 9 mm bullets had struck the right-hand luggage case, two small neat holes in the black polyvinyl. The sports bag was in there.

He unclipped the case and took out the bag. Two holes, perfectly round.

He locked everything and crossed the pavement and entered the door.

The night porter sat sleeping in his chair. Thobela had to ding the bell with his palm before the man stood up groggily and pushed the register over the desk. He filled in his particulars.

“Will you take South African rand?”

“Yes.”

“Can I still get something to eat?”

“Ring room service. Nine one. Passport, please.”

He passed it over. The man’s bloodshot eyes barely looked at it, just checking the number against the one he had written down. Then he pulled a key out of the lock-up cupboard behind him and passed it over.

Before the rattling elevator had reached the ground floor and opened for Umzingeli, the man was asleep again.

The room was large, the bed heavenly under its multicolored spread and the pillows billowy and tempting.

First, a shower. Redress the wound. Eat, drink.

And then sleep— dear God, how he would sleep.

He zipped open the sports bag. Time to review the damage. He shook the contents onto the double bed. Nothing to mention, even his toilet bag was whole. Then he picked up the hard drive and held it in his hands and saw that it was destroyed. The Heckler & Koch rounds had hit the middle of the almost square box, where metal and plastic and integrated circuits came together. The data was lost forever.

No wonder the bang had been so loud.

Heads together, voices low, Janina Mentz and the director looked like lovers in the Long Street Café. She said the hard drive was the wrong focus, containing nothing of importance, old stale intelligence locked up in a safe by an old man who wanted to feel he still had a part in the game, suddenly dug up when he was in trouble. Thobela Mpayipheli was no longer important; he had become a marginal figure, an irritation at worst. Let him go, the action was in Lusaka, the answers lay waiting there.

“We already have four operatI'ves there. We are going to send another twelve, the best we have. We want to know who is holding Johnny Kleintjes hostage and we want to know how they knew of this operation. I considered sending the RU to Lusaka, but we don'’t want an incident; we need a low profile, to work subtly. We need silent numbers, not fireworks.”

“And what about the leak?”

“I am only involving four people here— myself, you, sir, Quinn, and Rajkumar. We keep it small, we keep it intimate, and we get the answers.”

“Does Tiger know?”

“Tiger knows only that priorities have changed. Anyway, he is on a mission of his own. Apparently, he is going to stop Mpayipheli. In Botswana.”

“And you let him go?”

She thought this over before answering carefully. “Tiger has earned his chance, sir. He is alone.”

The director shook his head. “Tiger has the wrong motives, Janina.”

“He has always had the wrong motives, Mr. Director. That is why he is such an asset.”

They lay beside each other in the dark, she on her back, he on his side next to her, stroking her body, getting to know it from her neck to her toes. His touch was paradise, absolute acceptance. She had asked him when the perspiration and the passion had cooled and his palm was absently stroking over her full breasts and she felt the warmth of his breath on her nipples, she had asked him if he liked her body and he had said, “More than you will ever know,” and that was the end of her fears for tonight. She knew there was one more up ahead, but that could wait until tomorrow; she wanted to experience this moment without anxiety. His voice was gentle, his head in her neck, his hand never stopped stroking, and he spoke to her, told her everything, opening a new world to her.

Captain Tiger Mazibuko crossed the border an hour after midnight. He was driving a

i

.8-liter GTI Turbo Volkswagen Golf. He had no idea how Janina Mentz had organized it: it was waiting for him at the police station at Ellisras, and the keys were handed to him at the desk of the charge office once he had shown his passport. Now he was in Botswana and he drove as fast as the narrow road and the darkness allowed in this other country, with cattle and goats grazing beside the road. He had made his calculations. Everything depended on the dog’s progress, but the injuries would hold him up. The pilot of the Oryx had spoken with him over the cell phone; they had their hate for Mpayipheli in common. The pilot said the wound was bad and the fugitive would not last the night on the motorbike. He was close to falling when he came out of the helicopter, and there were more shots fired, perhaps he had taken another bullet or two.

Let’s say the fucker was tougher than they thought; let’s say he kept going

Then Mpayipheli would be ahead of him. At least two hours ahead.

Would he be able to catch him?

It depended on how fast the bugger could ride— he had to eat, he had to rest, he had to drink and fill up with petrol.

It was possible.

Maybe he slept somewhere and then Tiger would wait for him. At the bridge over the Zambezi, just beyond the place where the waters of the great river and the Chobe merged.

A good place for a death in Africa.

Before he turned off the light and sank into the softness of the double bed, he sat staring at the telephone. His longing for Miriam and Pakamile was overwhelming— just one call, “don'’t worry about the reports over the radio, I am okay, I am nearly there, I love you,” that was all he wanted to say, but if they had tapped the line, they would know immediately where he was and they would come get him.

If only he could contact someone and say the terrible information on your piece of computer equipment is destroyed, your dark secrets are safe and threaten no one, leave me alone, let me go help an old friend, and then let me go home.

Tomorrow he would be there, late tomorrow afternoon he would ride into Lusaka. He had read the signs— no roadblocks outside Gaborone, no hot pursuit by the Oryx, obviously they did not want to involve the Botswana government, they wanted to keep it in the family. Probably they were waiting for him in Lusaka, but that was good, he could handle that, he was trained in the art of urban warfare. Tomorrow it would all be over. He felt as if he were sinking into the bed, deeper and deeper, so weary, his whole body exhausted, but his brain was flashing images of the day behind him. He was aware of the physiology of the bullet wounds, the feverishness, the effects of the painkillers and four cans of cola and the brandy he had after his room service meal.

We have a club sandwich and chips or a cheeseburger and chips, take your pick.

He could rationalize his emotions, but he could not suppress them, he felt so alone.

Not for the first time. Other cities, other hotel rooms, but that was different, there had been no Miriam before.

There had never been a Miriam before he had found her. There were other women; at Odessa there were the prostitutes, the official Stasi-approved whores to see to their needs, to keep the levels of testosterone under control so they would pay attention to their training. Afterward he was under instructions— don'’t get involved, don'’t get attached, don'’t stay with a woman. But his Eastern bloc masters had not reckoned on the Scandinavians’ obsession with black men. Lord, those Swedish women, shamelessly hot for him, on his first visit in ’

82

, three of them had approached him in a coffee shop in Stockholm, one after another until he had fled, sure of a plot, some NATO counterintelligence operation. Eventually, a year later, Neta had explained it to him: it was just a thing they had, she couldn'’t say why. Agneta Nilsson, long fine blond hair and two wild weeks of passion in Brussels until the KGB had sent a courier to say that was enough, you are trespassing, looking for trouble. He, Thobela Mpayipheli from the Kei, had eaten white bread, the whitest to be had, sated himself to the bursting point but not his heart, his heart remained empty until he had seen Miriam. Not even in ’

94

had his heart been so empty, waiting for the call from a man who was now minister, waiting for his reward, waiting to be included in the victory, to share the fruits, waiting. Days of wandering the streets, a stranger in his own land, among his own people. He had thought of his father in those weeks, played with the idea of taking the train to visit his parents, to stand in the doorway and say, “Here I am, this is what happened to me,” but there was too much baggage, the gulf was too wide to cross, and in the evenings he went back to the room and waited for the call that never came— rejected, that is how he felt, a feeling that slowly progressed to one of betrayal. They had made him what he was, and now they didn’'t want to know. Eventually he went to Cape Town so he could hear the tongue of his ancestors again, until he decided to offer his services where they would be appreciated, where he would be included, where he could be part of something.

It had not worked out as he thought it would. The Flats had been good to him, but he remained the outsider, still alone, alone among others.

But not so lonely as now, not like now. Fevered chills, strange dreams, a conversation with his father that never ended, explanation, justification, on and on, words flowing out of him, and his father receding, shaking his head and praying, and then he forced himself to wake up, sweating, and the pain in his hip was a dull throbbing and he got up and drank from the tap in the bathroom of the cold sweet water.

Somewhere in the predawn Allison Healy awoke from sleep momentarily, just enough to register one thought: the decision to withhold the information that he had given her was the best decision of her life.

Had she known, in those moments when she had to decide? Had she known despite her fears and insecurities?

It no longer mattered. She rolled over, pressing her voluptuousness against his back and thighs, and sighed with joy before she softly sank away in sleep again.

38.

When Lien and Lizette crept into the double bed beside her, Janina Mentz woke up and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?” she asked.

Lien said, “It’s early, Ma, sleep a little longer.”

She checked the clock radio. “It’s half past six.”

“Very early,” said Lizette.

“Time to get ready,” she said without enthusiasm. She could sleep for another hour or two.

“We’re not going to school today,” said her youngest.

“Oh, really?”

“It’s National Keep Your Mother at Home at Any Cost Day.”

“Hah!”

“Failure to obey is punishable with a fine of five hundred rands’ worth of new clothes for every descendant.”

“That will be the day.”

“It is the day. National Keep Your Mum—”

“Put on the TV”

“Watching TV so early in the morning is harmful to the middle-aged brain. You know that, Ma.”

“Middle-aged, my foot. I want to see the news.”

“Maaa … leave the work until we go to school.”

“It’s not work, it’s a healthy interest in my environment and my world. An attempt to demonstrate to my darling daughters that there are more things in life than Britney Spears and horny teenage boys.”

“Like what?” said Lien.

“Name one thing,” said Lizette.

“Put on the TV”

“Okay, okay.”

“Middle-aged. That’s a new one.”

“People should be comfortable with their age.”

“I hope I see the same level of wisdom on your report cards.”

“There you go— the middle-aged brain’s last resort. The school report.”

Lien pressed the button on the small color television. A sports program on M-Net appeared slowly on the screen.

“The middle-aged brain wants to know who has been watching TV in my room.”

“I had no choice. Lien was busy entertaining horny teenage boys in the sitting room.”

“Put it on TV2 and stop talking rubbish.”

“isn'’t there an educational program—”

“Shhh…”

… details about the South African weapons scandal. The newspaper quotes a source saying the data Mpayipheli is carrying contains the Swiss bank account details of government officials involved in the weapons deals, as well as the amounts allegedly paid in bribes and kickbacks. A spokesperson for the Office of the Minister of Defence strongly denied the allegations, saying it was, quote, another malicious attempt by the opposition press to damage the credibility of the government with deliberate lies and fabrications, unquote.

The spokesperson also denied any military involvement in the disappearance of Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi, the common-law wife of the fugitive Mpayipheli, and her six-year-old son. According to the

Cape Times,

a man identifying himself as an employee of the Department of Defence took young Pakamile Nzululwazi into his custody last night, after his mother was arrested at her place of work, a commercial bank, earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, rival motorcycle groups seemingly supporting Mr. Mpayipheli clashed in Kimberley last night. Police were called in to break up several fights in the city. Nine motorcyclists were treated for injuries at a hospital.

Moving on to other news …

The other fear embraced her when she awoke and found Van Heerden gone. No note, nothing, and she knew the fear would be her constant companion until she heard from him again. Until she saw him again, the impulse to dial his number, to seek reassurance and confirmation, would strengthen through the day, but she must resist at all costs.

She stood up, looking for salvation in routine, swung the gown over her shoulders, put on the kettle, opened the front door, and retrieved the two newspapers. Went back to the kitchen, scanned the

Times,

everything was as she had written it, the main story, the boxes, the other two stories. She glanced quickly at pages two and three, did not see the small report hidden away, unimportant.

LUSAKA— Zambian police are investigating the death of two American tourists after their bodies were found by pedestrians on the outskirts of the capital yesterday.

A law enforcement spokesman says that the tourists died of gunshot wounds, and the apparent motive was robbery. The names of the two men are expected to be released today after the American embassy and relatI'ves have been notified.

No arrests have been made.

She was in a hurry to get to the

Burger.

She opened the newspaper on the breakfast bar.

Weapons Scandal:

MOTORCYCLE MAN HOLDS THE KEY

CAPE TOWN— Full particulars of the South African weapons scandal, including names, relevant sums, and Swiss bank account numbers of government officials are allegedly contained in the computer hard drive in the possession of the fugitive Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli— the motorcyclist who still evades arrest by the authorities.

Sweet lord,

she thought,

where did this come from?

According to advocate Pieter Steenkamp, previously of the Directorate for the Investigation of Serious Economic Crimes (Disec), there was frequent mention of the hard drive during the hearing of evidence relating to alleged irregularities in the weapons transaction of R43.8 billion last year.

“Come on,” murmured Allison.

“We conducted more than a hundred interviews and according to my notes, at least seven times there was mention made of complete electronic data in the possession of an intelligence agency,” said Advocate Steenkamp, who joined the Democratic Alliance in November last year.

“My allegations will probably be dismissed as petty politicking. We will just see more coverup. It is in the interest of the country and all its people that Mr. Mpayipheli is not apprehended. His journey has more significance than that of Dick King who rode on horseback from Durban to Grahamstown in 1842 to warn the English of the Boer siege.”

The fugitive motorcyclist was still on the loose at the time of going to press after leaving Cape Town on a stolen BMW R1150 GS (see article below) the day before yesterday. According to a SAPS source, Mpayipheli evaded government authorities at Three Sisters during one of the worst thunderstorms in recent memory (article on p. 5, weather forecast on S8).

An extensive operation at Petrusburg in the Free State also failed to apprehend the Umkhonto veteran last night. Unconfirmed reports claim that he crossed the border into Botswana late last night.

Allison Healy considered the report, staring at the magnets on her fridge.

Not impossible.

And if they were right, she had been scooped. Badly.

She looked down at the page again. There was another article, presented in box form beside the picture of a man standing next to a motorcycle.

By Jannie Kritzinger, Motoring editor

This is the motorcycle that created a sensation last year by beating the legendary sports models like the Kawasaki ZX-6R, Suzuki SV 650 S, Triumph Sprint ST, and even the Yamaha YZF-Ri in a notorious alpine high-speed road test run by the leading German magazine,

Motorrad.

But the BMW R1150 GS is anything but a racing motorcycle. In truth, it is the number one seller in a class or niche that it has created— the so-called multipurpose motorcycle that is equally at home on a two-track ground road or the freeway.

While the GS stands for “Gelä;nde/Strasse” (literally “veld and street”), the multipurpose idea has expanded to include models from Triumph, Honda, and Suzuki, which all use drive-chain technology.

She scanned the rest, wanting to turn to the promised article on page two (MOTORCYCLIST IS PSYCHOPATH, SAYS BRIGADIER and MPAYIPHELI MUTILATED ME— REH ABILITAT ED CRIMINAL TELLS ALL and THE BATTLE OF KIMBERLEY! BIKER GANGS HAND-TO-HAND), but her cell phone rang in the bedroom and she ran, praying,

Please, let it be him.

“Allison, I have a guy on the phone who says he rescued the boy last night. Can I give him your number?”

Thobela’s plate was filled with sausage and eggs, fried tomato and bacon, beans in tomato sauce, and fried mushrooms. Hot black bitter coffee stood steaming on the starched white tablecloth, and he ate with a ravenous appetite.

He had overslept, waking only at twenty to seven, his wounds excruciating, wobbly on his feet, hands still trembling but controllable like an idling engine. He had bathed without haste, carefully inspected the bloody mass, covered it up again, taking only one pill this time, dressed and come down to eat.

In the upper corner of the dining room the television was fixed to a metal arm. CNN reported on share prices and George Bush’s latest faux pas with the Chinese and on the European Community that had turned down yet another corporate merger, and then the newsreader murmured something about South Africa and he looked up to see the photo of his motorbike on the screen and froze. But he could not hear, so he went forward till he was directly under the screen.

… the fugitive’s common-law wife and her son have since gone missing. Mpayipheli is yet to be apprehended. Other African news: Zim babwean police arrested another foreign journalist under the country’s new media legislation, this time the

Guardian

correspondent Simon Eagleton …

Gone missing?

What the fuck did they mean by “gone missing”?

Captain Tiger Mazibuko ate in the Golf. He had pulled off the road two hundred meters south of the Zambezi bridge and he had the tasteless hamburger on his lap and was drinking out of the Fanta orange can. He wished he could brush his teeth and close his eyes for an hour or two, but at least he was reasonably sure the dog had not passed there yet.

He had stopped at every filling station, Mahalapye, Palapye, Francistown, Mosetse, Nata, and Kasane, and no one had seen a motorbike. Every petrol attendant he had gently nudged awake or otherwise woken had shaken his head. Last week, yes, there had been a few. Two, three English but they were going down to Johannesburg. Tonight? No, nothing.

So he could wait, his furry mouth could wait for toothpaste, his red eyes for healing water, his sour body could wait for a hot, soapy shower.

When he had eaten, he unlocked the trunk, lifted the cover of the spare tire, loosened the butterfly nut, lifted the tire, and extracted the parts of his weapon.

It took two trips to transfer the parts of the R 4 to the front seat without obviously holding a firearm in his hands. There were people walking and cars passing continuously between the border post a kilometer or so north and the town of Kasane behind him. He assembled the assault rifle, keeping his movements below the steering wheel, away from curious eyes.

He would use it to stop the cunt. Because he had to come this way, he had to cross this bridge, even if he avoided the border post.

And once he had stopped him

39.

The battle raged in him as he stood in front of the hotel, booted and spurred, ready to ride. The urge to turn around, to go back, was terrifically powerful. If they harmed Miriam and Pakamile Gone missing.

He had tried to convince himself that she could have taken her child and fled; if the media knew about them, there would be continuous calls and visitors— and he knew Miriam, he knew what her reaction would be. He had phoned from his hotel room, first her house, where it rang without ceasing. Eventually he gave up and thought desperately whom he could call, who would know at eight in the morning. Van Heerden— he could not remember the number, had to call international Information, give the spelling and hold on for ages. When it came he had to write hurriedly on a piece of torn-off hotel stationery. He phoned but Van Heerden was not at home. In frustration, he threw the phone down, took his stuff, paid the account, and went and stood by the motorbike. Conflicting urges battled within him, he was on the point of going back, Lobatse, Mafikeng, Kimberley Cape Town. No, maybe Miriam had fled; it would take him two days, better finish one thing, what if

Eventually he left, and now he was on the road to Francistown, barely aware of the long straight road. Worry was one traveling companion, the other was the truth that he had uncovered through an African song under the Modder river bridge.

“I want to bring the boy to you,” said Vincent Radebe to her over the phone.

“Where is he?”

“He’s waiting in the car.”

“Why me?”

“I read your story in the paper.”

“But why do you want to bring him to me?”

“Because it is not safe. They will find me.”

“Who?”

“I’m in enough trouble already. I cannot tell you.”

“Do you know where his mother is?”

“Yes.”

“Where?” He answered so quietly that she could not hear. “What did you say?”

“His mother is dead.”

“Oh, God.”

“I haven’t told him yet. I can’t.”

“Oh, my God.”

“He has no family. I would have taken him to family, but he says there is no one. And he is not safe with me; I know they will find me. Please help.”

No, she wanted to say, no, she couldn'’t do this, what would she do, how would she manage?

“Please, Miss Healy”

Say no, say no.

“The newspaper,” she said. “Please take him to the office, I will meet you there.”

All the directors were there— NIA, Secret Service, Presidential Intelligence— heads of Defence and Police, and the minister, the attractive Tswana minister, stood in the center and her voice was sharp and cutting and her anger filled the room with shrill decibels because the president had called her to account, not phoned but called her in. Stood her on the red carpet and dressed her down. The president’s anger was always controlled, they said, but it had not been that morning. The minister said the president’s anger was terrible, because everything hung in the balance, Africa stood with a hand out for its African renaissance plan and the USA and the EU and the Commonwealth and the World Bank had to decide. As if all the misunderstandings and undermining with the whole AIDS mess was not enough, now we are abducting women and children and chasing war veterans across the veld on a motorbike, of all things, and everyone who has a nonsensical theory about what is on the hard drive is creeping out of the woodwork and the press are having a field day, even the

Sowetan,

that damned assistant editor’s piece, he was with Mpayipheli at school, he talked to the man’s mother. How does that make us look?

The minister was the torchbearer of the president’s anger and she let it burn high, sparing no one, focusing on no one; she addressed them collectively, and Janina Mentz sat there thinking it was all in vain because there were twenty agents in Lusaka and within the hour they would storm the Republican Hotel and put an end to it. And sometime today, Tiger Mazibuko would shoot the big, bad biker from his celebrated fucking BMW and then it would no longer matter that the woman was dead and the child gone and it would be business as usual again in Africa. Tomorrow, the day after, there would be other news, the Congo or Somalia or Zimbabwe, it was just another death in Africa; did the minister think America cared? Did she think the European Union kept count?

The telephone rang on the minister’s desk and she glared at it; Janina was amazed that the phone neither shrank nor melted. The minister went to the door and yelled, “Did I not tell you to hold all calls?” and a nervous male voice answered. The minister said, “What?” and an explanation followed. She slammed the door and the telephone continued to ring and the minister went to her desk and in a tone lost between despair and madness said, “The boy. They have the boy. The newspaper. And they want to know if the mother is dead.”

CIA

EYES ONLY

FOR ATTENTION:

Assistant Deputy Director (Middle East and Africa) CIA HQ, Langley, Virginia

PREPARED BY:

Luke John Powell (Senior Agent in Charge— Southern Africa) Cape Town, South Africa

SUBJECT:

Operation Safeguard: the loss of four agents in the protection of South African source Inkululeko

I. BACKGROUND TO OPERATION SAFEGUARD

Inkululeko is the code name for a source the CIA acquired in 1996 in the South African government. The source was secured after tentative signals from subject during an embassy function were explored. Subject’s motivation at the time was stated as disillusionment with SA government’s continued support of rogue states, including Iraq, Iran, Cuba, and Libya. This author recruited subject personally, as it was the first acquisition inside the ANC/Cosatu Alliance that was not previously Nationalist government-aligned. Subject’s motivation was suspicious at the time, but has since proved valuable as a source.

Exact motivation still unknown.

It took the leader of the operation seven minutes and five thousand American dollars to buy over the manager of the Republican Hotel and pinpoint the room where Johnny Kleintjes was being held.

He had a team of twenty agents, but he chose just five to accompany him to 227. The others were ordered to man the entrances, the fire escape, and elevators, to watch windows and balconies from outside, or to sit in one of the vehicles with engines idling, ready for the unpredictable.

The leader had a key in his hand, but he sprayed silicon in the keyhole, using a yellow can with a thin red pipe on the cap. His colleagues stood ready at his back with firearms pointing at the roof. The leader fitted the key carefully and quietly turned it. The lubricated mechanism opened soundlessly. The leader gave the signal and opened the door in one smooth motion, and the first two agents rolled into the room, but all they saw was the body of an old colored man with gruesome wounds all over his body.

On Johnny Kleintjes’s lap lay two hard drives and on his chest a word was carved with a sharp instrument.

KAATHIEB.

“Leave him with me,” said the black male secretary of the minister, and Allison Healy bent down and said to Pakamile Nzulul-wazi, who gripped her hand, “We have to go and talk in there, Pakamile. Will you stay with this nice man for a while?” The child’s body expressed anxiety, and her heart contracted. He looked at the secretary and shook his head. “I want to stay with you.” She hugged him to her, not knowing what to do.

The secretary said something in Xhosa, in a quiet voice, and she said sharply, “Talk so I can understand.”

“I only said I will tell him a story.”

Pakamile shook his head. “I want to stay with you.” She had become his anchor when Radebe handed him over to her; he was confused, afraid, and alone. He had asked for his mother a hundred times, and she didn’'t know how much more of this she could stand.

“He had better come along,” said her editor to the secretary.

They were a delegation of four, not counting the boy. The editor and her and the managing director and the news editor, not one of whom had ever been there before. The door opened and the minister stood there and looked at Pakamile and there was so much compassion in her eyes.

She held the door for them, and Allison and the child walked ahead, the men behind. Inside, a white woman and a black man were already seated. The man stood up and she saw he was small and there was the bulge of a hump at his neck.

He stopped at Mahalapye for petrol and crossed over to the small café in search of a newspaper, but the small local paper had nothing and so he went on. The African heat reflected sharply from the blacktop and the sun was without mercy. He ought to have taken more pills, as the pain of the wound was paralyzing him. How badly was he damaged?

Huts, small farmers, children cavorting carefree beside the road, two Boer goats sauntering to greener pastures across the road— oh, Botswana, why couldn'’t his own country lie across the landscape as easily, so without fuss? Why couldn'’t the faces of his people remain as carefree, as easily laughing, as at peace? What made the difference? Not the artificially drawn lines through the savannah that said this country ends here and that one begins there.

Less blood had flowed here, for sure; their history was less fraught. But why?

Perhaps they had fewer reasons to shed blood. Fewer gripping vistas, less succulent pastures, fewer hotheads, less valuable minerals. Perhaps that was the curse of South Africa, the land where God’s hand had slipped, where He had spilled from the cup of plenty— green mountains and valleys, long waving grass as far as the eye could see, precious metals, priceless stones, minerals. And He looked over it and thought,