Heart of the Hunter

I will leave it so, let it be a test, a temptation; I will put people here with a great thirst, I will let them come out of Africa and the white north and I will see what they do with this paradise.

Or perhaps Botswana’s salvation was merely that the gap between rich and poor was so much smaller. Less envy, less hatred. Less blood.

His thoughts were invaded again.

Gone missing:

the refrain ran in his mind;

gone missing:

it blended with the monotonous drone of the GS’s engine, the wind that hissed on his helmet, the rhythms of his heart pushing blood painfully through his hip. He sweated; the heat increased with every kilometer, and it came from inside him. He would have to be careful, keep his wits; he would need to rest, take in fluids, shake the dullness from his head. His body was very sick. He counted the kilometers, concentrated on calculations of average speed, so many kilometers per minute, so many hours left.

He eventually stopped at Francistown.

He dismounted with difficulty at the petrol station, put the bike on its stand. There was a slippery feel to the wound, as if it was opening up.

The petrol jockey’s voice was distant. “Your friend was looking for you early today.”

“My friend?”

“He went through here early this morning in a Golf.” As if that explained everything.

“I don'’t have a friend with a Golf.”

“He asked if we’d seen you. A black man on a big orange BMW motorbike.”

“What did he look like?”

“He’s a lion. Big and strong.”

“Which way did he go?”

“That way.” The man pointed his finger to the north.

40.

A

llison the onlooker.

She was always good at that, to look on from the outside, to be part of a group but in her head to be apart. She had worried about it, thought it over for hours at a time, analyzed it for years, and the best conclusion she had come to was that that was how the gears and springs and levers of her brain were put together, a strange and accidental product, no one’s fault. Yesterday afternoon already she had known that he was like that, too. Two freaks who had sniffed each other out in a sea of normality, two islands that had improbably collided. But once again she found herself with that distance separating her from others, the itch of it was a gnawing voice of conscience that it was a form of fraud, to pretend you were part when you did not fit. You knew you did not belong here. The advantage was that it made her a good reporter because she saw what others were blind to.

There was an undercurrent to the negotiations.

The communication was stilted, in English, grown-ups speaking grown-up language so the child would be protected and the painful truths delayed.

The conversation was not for the record, the minister said. The nature of it was too sensitive, and she wanted agreement on that from all the parties.

One after another they nodded.

Good, she said. We will proceed. There was a child psychologist on the way. Also two women from the day-care center, as the therapist said familiar figures would be a cushion when the news was broken to him. Also a man and a woman from Child Welfare would be arriving soon. Senior people, very experienced.

Everything would be done, everything the state had access to, and the full machinery would be turned on, because what we had here was a tragedy.

Allison read the subtext. The minister watched the other woman, not continuously, but as staccato punctuation in the discourse, as if she were checking that she was on the right path.

This other woman. Not officially introduced. Sat there in her business suit like a finalist for Businesswoman of the Year, gray trousers, black shoes, white blouse, gray jacket, hands manicured but without color on the nails, makeup soft and subtle, hair tied back, eyes without expression, a hint of beauty in a face with stern, unapproachable lines, but it was the body language that spoke louder, of control, a figure of authority, driven, self-assured.

Who was she?

A tragedy, the minister was saying, carefully choosing adult words and phrases, euphemisms and figuratI've speech to spare the child. Innocent people who were involved through chance. She wished she could tell the media everything, but that was impossible, so she had to make an appeal. They would have to trust her that you couldn'’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and that made Allison shI'ver; we live in a dangerous world, a complicated world, and to help this young democracy to survI've was much more difficult than the press could ever imagine.

There was the operation, a sensitive, necessary, well-planned operation, fully within the stipulation of the National Strategic Intelligence Act of 1994 (Act 94-38, 2 December 1994, as amended) and in the national interest; she did not use the term lightly, knowing how often it had been abused in the past, but they would have to take her word for it. National interest.

She wanted to make one thing clear: the operation as planned by the intelligence services did not require the involvement of innocent parties. To be frank, great efforts were made to avoid that. But things had gone wrong. Things that nobody could have foreseen. The operation that had run so smoothly had been derailed. Civilians were drawn in by underhanded methods; an innocent bystander was sucked into the vortex by an evil force, a third party, resulting in tragedy. If she could turn back the clock and change it, she would, but they all knew that was beyond the realm of possibility. A tragedy, because a civilian had died, possibly by her own hand; the motivation, the precise circumstances were not wholly clear, but for the minister that was one civilian too many and she mourned, she could tell them she mourned for that life that had been blotted out. But (a) it had nothing to do with any weapons scandal, of that she was absolutely sure; (b) there would be a complete, official, and rigorous inquiry into the great loss; (c) if there was any responsibility or negligence on the part of any official, they would proceed relentlessly with a disciplinary hearing according to Article 15 of the Intelligence Services Act of 1994 (as amended); and (d) the young dependent would receive the best care available, after ascertaining beyond a doubt whether any relatI'ves existed, and if there were none, the state would fulfill its responsibilities, that was her personal promise, she would stake her entire reputation, her career even, on that.

The minister looked at everyone, and Allison knew she was trying to gauge whether they accepted her explanation.

What would have happened if Pakamile had not been dropped off at the

Cape Times

offices? She knew the answer. It would have been hushed up. Wife and child? What wife and child? We know nothing about that. But there was a righteousness in the minister, a desperation to her honor.

“Madam Minister,” said the editor, the bespectacled, dignified colored man whom Allison greatly respected. “Let me just say that we are not the monsters politicians always make us out to be.”

“Of course,” said the minister.

“We have sympathy for your role and your position.”

“Thank you.”

“But we do have one small problem. Having now gone on record that these two civilians have gone missing, and in the light of the huge tragedy that is, to some extent at least, public knowledge, if you are going to involve two ladies from the child-care center, we cannot write absolutely nothing.”

Inkululeko

is the Zulu word for “freedom,” and there’s an interesting historical footnote to this code name: apparently, there were constant rumors in the seventies and eighties that a mole of Zulu origin existed in the echelons of the ANC/SA Communist Party Alliance— a mole who allegedly leaked information to both the CIA and the SA apartheid government. As you may know, there was no truth to this rumor. We had no reliable source within the Movement at the time. Although several low-key attempts to acquire one was made, the CIA did not regard it as a high priority, due to the intelligence available through Eastern bloc entities at the time, and the view that the ANC/SACP did not constitute a threat to the USA or NATO.

However, when a code name had to be assigned after the 1996 recruitment, the subject suggested “Inkululeko” and pointed out the potential disinformation value thereof, as she had no Zulu ties whatsoever, being of European extraction.

The importance of this source multiplied wonderfully in 2000 when she was approached and recruited for the position of operations chief of staff for a newly created governmental agency, the PIU, or Presidential Intelligence Agency We believe the PIU was set up in an effort to counter the never-ending infighting, the legacy of jealousy and politics of the other three arms of the SA intelligence community the National Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, and Military Intelligence. All PIU staff were drawn from nonintelligence sources, with the sole exception of the director, an ANC and Umkhonto veteran.

2. ORIGIN OF OPERATION SAFEGUARD

In March of this year, a known member of a Cape-based militant Muslim splinter group with suspected ties to al Qaeda and Iranian strongman Ismail Khan was arrested by the SAPS on charges of the illegal possession of firearms.

During interrogation, the suspect, one Ismail Mohammed, indicated that he had information that could be of use to the SA intelligence community, and intended to use this information as plea-bargain leverage.

As luck would have it, a member of the PIU conducted an interview with the suspect. The information regarded the identity of Inkululeko.

Her heart was full when she walked out into the sun and the southeaster. Pakamile was inside, being clucked over by two black ladies from the day care who had taken him to their bosom. The child psychologist, a short dapper white man in his thirties with put-on caring and an inflated idea of his importance, was waiting for his five minutes of fame. The Welfare people with their forms and files knew their place in the hierarchy of bureaucracy and so sat outside on a wooden bench.

Allison Healy walked with her male colleagues down the steps and over the street as Van Heerden once more invaded her thoughts. She said, “You go ahead,” because she wanted to turn on her cell phone, maybe there was a message. She dawdled as the wind plucked at her dress, punching in her PIN number and waiting for the phone to pick up a signal.

She saw the woman in the gray suit leave the building with the small hunchbacked man.

She looked down at the phone again. YOU HAVE TWO MESSAGES. PLEASE DIAL 121.

Thank goodness. She keyed in the numbers and waited, her brown eyes following the man and woman up Wale Street.

“Hullo, Allison, it’s Rassie. Good articles this morning, well done. Phone me, there are some interesting things. Bye.”

To save this message, press nine. To delete it, press seven. To return a call, press three. To save it…

She hurriedly pressed seven.

Next message:

“Allison, Nic here. I just want to … I want to see you, Allison. I don'’t want to wait till the weekend. Please. I… miss you. Phone me, please. I know I’m a pain. I talk too much. I’m available tonight. Oh, good work in the paper today. Phone me.”

To save this message …

Irritated, she pressed seven.

End of new messages. To listen to your…

Why didn’'t Van Heerden call?

The white woman and the black man were disappearing up the street, and on impulse she followed them. It was something to occupy her mind. She walked fast, the wind at her back. She pushed the cell phone into her handbag and tried to catch up, her eyes searching until she saw the woman turn in at a building. Someone called her name. It was the Somali at the cigarette stand. “Hi, Allison, not buying today?”

“Not today,” she said.

“don'’t work too hard.”

“I won’t.”

She walked fast to the place where the woman had turned in, eventually looking up at the name above the big double doors.

WALE STREET CHAMBERS.

Just a simple call.

Hi, Allison, how’s it going?

How much would that take? Was that too much to ask?

Some of the information from the interview with Ismail Mohammed was surprisingly accurate. He stated that:

i. Inkululeko was a more recent source than generally believed.

ii. There was no evidence that Inkululeko had a direct Zulu connection and that the contrary should be explored.

iii. Inkululeko was not a member of Parliament or the ANC leadership (which the constant rumors had indicated over the years).

iv. Inkululeko was most definitely part of the current SA intelligence setup and held a senior position within the intelligence community.

v. The Muslim structures (unspecified) were getting closer to identifying Inkululeko, and it was only a matter of time before full identification would be made.

It is significant to note that Mohammed referred to Inkululeko as “he” and “him” during several interviews, indicating the level of true knowledge, despite the accuracy of the above statements.

The major question, of course, is how the SA Muslim structures acquired this knowledge.

According to Mohammed, they have been feeding disinformation regarding international Muslim activities, operations, and networks into the SA governmental and intelligence systems through a deliberate and well-planned process, with checks and balances on the other side to try and determine which chunks of disinformation got through to the CIA.

One such instance that we know of is the warning this office passed on to Langley in July of 2001 of a pending attack on the U.S. embassy in Lagos, Nigeria. The tip-off was received from Inkululeko, and additional U.S. Marines were deployed in and around the Lagos embassy at the time. As you know, the attack never materialized, but the intensified security measures should have been easy to monitor by Muslim extremists in Nigeria.

Fortunately for us, Inkululeko received the report on the Mohammed interview directly and was understandably disturbed by the contents. After giving the matter some thought, she put a proposal to this office.

41.

O

n the road between Francistown and Nata a strange thing happened. He seemed to withdraw into a cocoon, the pain melted away, the overpowering heat in him and around him dissipated, he seemed to leave the discomfort of his body behind and float above the motorbike, distanced from reality, and though he could not understand how it had happened, he was awed by the wonder of it.

He was still aware of Africa around him, the grass shoulder to shoulder in khaki green and red-brown columns marching across the open plains beside the black ribbon of tarmac. Here and there acacias hunched in scrums and rucks and mauls. The sky was a dome of azure without limits, and the birds accompanied him, hornbills shooting across his field of vision, swallows diving and dodging, a bateleur tumbling out of the heavens, vultures riding the thermals far to the west in a spiral endlessly reaching upward. For a moment he was with them, one of them, his wings spanned tight, as wires registered every shuddering turbulence, and then he was back down there, and all the time the sun shone, hot and yellow and angry, as if it would sterilize the landscape, as if it could burn clean the evil sores of the continent with steadfast light and searing fire.

Why was the heat no longer in him, why did the shI'ver of intense cold run through his body like the frontal gusts of a storm?

It freed thoughts, like the chunks of a melting ice sheet, mixed up, jumbled, floating in his heart, things he had forgotten, wanted to forget. And right at the back of his mind a monotonous refrain of whispers.

Gone missing.

His father in the pulpit with pearls of perspiration beading his forehead in the summer heat, one hand stretched out over the congregation, the other palm down, resting on the snow-white pages of the big Bible before him. A tall man in a somber black toga, his voice thundering with disapproval and reproach. “What ye sow shall ye reap. It is in the Book. God’s Word. And what do we sow, my brothers and sisters, what do we sow? Envy. Jealousy. And hate. Violence. We sow, every day in the fields of our lives, and then we cannot understand when it comes back to us. We say, Lord, why? As if it was He that poured the bitter cup for us, we are dismayed. So easily we forget. But it is what we have sown.”

In Amsterdam the air was heavy and somber as his mood. He wandered through the busy streets, with his thick gray coat wrapped around him, Christmas carols spilling out from the doors along with the heat and eddying over the sidewalk, children in bright colors with red cheeks laughing like bells. He cast a long shadow in all this light. The assassination in Munich lay a week behind him, but he could not shake off the shame of it, it clung to him: this was not war. At a little shop on a corner opposite the canal, he spotted the ostrich eggs first, a heap in a grass basket, fake Bushman paintings on the oval, creamy white orbs; CURIOS FROM AFRICA, cried the display window. He saw wood carvings, the familiar mother and child figures and the tidy row of small carved ivory hippopotamuses and elephants, Africa in a nutshell for the continental drawing room, sanitized and tamed, the dark wound bound up with a white capitalistic bandage, peoples and tongues and cultures packaged in a few wooden masks with horrible expressions and tiny white ivory figurines.

Then he spotted the assegai and the oxhide shield, dusty and half forgotten, and he pushed open the door and went in. The bell tinkled. He picked up the weapon, turning it in his hands. The wooden shaft was smooth, the metal tip very long. He tested the shiny blade that was speckled with flecks of rust.

It was expensive, but he bought it and carried it off, an awkward parcel gift-wrapped in colorful ethnic paper.

He had sawed off the shaft in the shower of his hotel room, and the smell of the wood crept up his nose and the sawdust powdered the white tiles like snow and he remembered. He and his uncle Senzeni on the undulating Eastern Cape hill, the town down below in the hollow of the land as if God’s hand were folded protectively over it. “This is exactly where Nxele stood.” He laid out the history of his forefathers, broadly painted the battle of Grahamstown: this was where the soldiers had broken off the shafts of the long assegais, where the stabbing spear was born, not in Shaka’s land, that was a European myth, just another way to rob the Xhosa. Even our history was plundered, Thobela.

That was the day that Senzeni had said, “You have the blood of Nqoma, Thobela, but you have the soul of Nxele. I see it in you. You must give it life.”

He had laid the sawed-off assegai at the feet of his Stasi masters and said from now on this is how he would wage war, he would look his opponents in the eye, he would feel their breath on his face, they could take it or leave it.

“Very well,” they agreed with vague amusement behind the understanding frowns, but he did not care. He had made the scabbard himself so that the weapon could lie against his body, behind the great muscles and the spine, so he could feel it where it lay ready for his hand.

Gone missing,

sang the male voice choir in his head, and a road sign next to his path said Makgadikgadi and he found the rhythm in the name, the music of syllables.

“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation,” said his father in the pulpit.

Makgadikgadikgadikgadi,

gone missing, gone missing, gone missing

“We are our genes, we are the accidental sum of each of our forefathers, we are the product of the fall of the dice and the double helix. We cannot change that,” said Van Heerden with joy, finding excitement in that.

In Chicago he was awed by the unbelievable architecture and the color of the river, by the plenty and the streets that were impossibly clean. He walked self-consciously through the South Side and shook his head at their definition of a slum and wondered how many people of the Transkei would give their lives to let their children grow up here. Once he called out a greeting in Xhosa instinctively, as they were all black as he was, but their throats had ages since outgrown the feel of African sounds and he knew himself a stranger. He waited for the young Czech diplomat below the rumbling of the El, the elevated railway in the deep night shadows of the city. When the man came, he stood before him and said his name and saw only fear in the rodent eyes, a tiny scavenger. When his blade did the work, there was no honor in the blood, and Phalo and Rharhabe and all the other links in his genetic chain drooped their heads in shame.

Gone missing.

One day his victims would return, one day the deeds of his past would visit him in the present, the dead would reach out long, cold fingers and touch him, repayment for his cowardice, for the misuse of his heritage, for breaking the code of the warrior, because with the exception of the last, they were all pale plump civil servants, not fighters at all.

He thought the assegai, the direct confrontation, would make a difference. But to press the cold steel in the heart of pen pushers betrayed everything that he was; to hear the last breath of gray, unworthy opponents in your ears was a portent, a self-made prophecy, a definition of your future— somewhere one day, it will come back to you.

Gone missing.

Were the same words used for the people he had killed? Some were fathers, at least somebody’s son, although they were men, although they were part of the game, although they were every one a traitor to the conflict. And where was that conflict now, that useless chess game? Where were the ghosts of the Cold War? All that remained were memories and consequences, his personal inheritance.

The emptiness in him had grown; merely the nuances had changed with each city where he found himself, with the nature of the hotel room. The moments of pleasure were on the journey to the next one, when he could search for meaning anew at the next stop, search for something to fill the great hole, something to feed the monster growing inside.

The praise songs of his masters grew more hollow as time passed. At first, it was salve to his soul. The appreciation that rolled so smoothly off their tongues had stroked the shame away. “Look what your people say” and they showed him letters from the ANC in London that praised his service in flowery language.

This is my role,

he told himself.

This is my contribution to the freedom fight,

but he could not escape, not in the moments when he turned off the light and laid down his head and listened to the hiss of the hotel air-conditioning. Then he would hear his uncle Senzeni’s voice and he longed to be one of Nxele’s warriors who stood shoulder to shoulder, who broke the spear with a crack over his knee.

NATA , read the road sign, but he scarcely saw it. He and the machine were a tiny shadow on the plateau— they were one, grown together on a journey, every kilometer closer to completion, to fulfillment, engine and wind combining to a deep thrumming, a rhythmic swell like the breaking of waves. “Your friend was looking for you early today,” the petrol jockey in Francistown had said. He knew, he knew it was Mazibuko, the voice of hate. He had not only heard the hate, he had recognized it, felt the resonance and knew that here was another traveler— this was himself ten or fifteen years ago, empty and searching and hating and frustrated, before the insight had come, before the calm of Miriam and Pakamile.

He was in the hospital, he and Van Heerden, when it happened. When he saw himself for the first time. Afterward, not a day would pass that he did not think of it, that he did not try to unpick the knot of destiny.

He was shuffling down the hospital passage late one evening, his body still broken from the thing that he and Van Heerden had been in. He stood in a doorway to catch his breath, that was all. No deliberate purpose, just a moment of rest, and he glanced into the four-bed ward and there beside the bed of a young white boy a doctor was standing.

A black doctor. A Xhosa as tall as he was. Round about his fortieth year, gray hinting at the temples.

“What are you going to become one day, Thobela?” His father, the same man who Sunday after Sunday hurled God’s threats so terrifyingly from the pulpit with a condemning finger and a voice of reproach, was soft and gentle now to chase away the fear of an eight-year-old of the dark.

“A doctor,” he had said.

“Why, Thobela?”

“Because I want to make people better.”

“That is good, Thobela.” That year he had had the fever and the white doctor had driven through from Alice and come into the room with strange smells around him and compassion in his eyes. He had laid cool, hairy hands on the little black body, pressed the stethoscope here and there, had shaken out the thermometer.

You are a very sick boy, Thobela,

speaking Xhosa to him,

but we will make you better.

The miracle had happened, that night he broke through the white-hot wall of fever into the cool, clear pool on the other side where his world was still familiar and normal, and that’s when he knew what he wanted to be, a healer, a maker of miracles.

Where he stood watching the white boy and the black doctor in the doorway, he relived the scene, heard his own words to his father, and felt his knees weaken at the years that had been lost in the quicksand. He saw his life from another angle, saw the possibilities of other choices. He sagged slowly down against the wall, the weight too much to bear, all the brokenness, all the hatred, the violence and death, and the consuming deep craving to be free of it swallowed him up. Oh Lord, to be born again without it; he sank to his knees and stayed like that, head on his chest and deep, dry sobs tearing through his chest, opening up more memories until everything lay open before him, everything.

He had felt the black doctor’s hand on his shoulder and later was conscious that the man was holding him, that he was leaning on the shoulder of the white coat, and slowly he calmed down. The man helped him up, supporting him, laid him down on his bed, and pulled the sheets up to his chin.

You are a very sick boy but we will make you better.

He had slept and awoken and he had fought again, barefisted, honestly and honorably against the self-justification and rationalization. Out of the bloodied bodies of the dead rose a desire— he would be a farmer, a nurturer. He could not undo what had happened, he could not blot out who he had been, but he could determine where and how he would go from here. It would not be easy, step-by-step, a lifetime task, and that night he had eaten a full plate of food and thought through the night. The next morning before six he went to Van Heerden’s room and woke him up and said he was finished, and Van Heerden had looked at him with great wisdom, so he had asked with astonishment at the way he was underestimated: “You don'’t believe I can change?”

Van Heerden had known. Known what he had discovered last night under a bridge in the Free State.

He was Umzingeli.

Twenty kilometers south of Mpandamatenga, through the fever and hallucinations, he became aware of movement to the left of him. Between the trees and grass he saw three giraffes moving like wraiths against the sun, cantering stately as if to escort him on his journey, heads dipping to the rhythm in his head. And then he was floating alongside them, one of them, and he felt a freedom, an exuberance, and then he was rising higher and looking down on the three magnificent animals thundering on; he surged up higher and turned south and caught the wind in his wings, and it sang. It swept him along, and all was small and unimportant down there, a scrambling after nothing; he flew over borders, rolling kopjes and bright rivers and deep valleys that cut the continent, and far off he saw the ocean, and the song of the wind became the crash of the breakers where he stood looking out from the rocky point. Sets of seven, always sets of seven. He folded his wings and waited for the oasis of calm between the thunder, the moment of perfect silence that waited for him.

42.

B

y quarter past two, sleep began to overcome Tiger Mazibuko, so he put the machine pistol under the rubber mat at his feet and climbed out of the car for the umpteenth time. Where was the fucker, why wasn'’t he here yet?

He stretched and yawned and walked around the car, once, twice, three times, and sat on the edge of the hood, wiping the sweat from his face with a sleeve, folded his arms, and stared down the road. He did the calculations again. Maybe Mpayipheli had stopped for lunch or to have his wounds tended to by a quack in Francistown. He looked again at his wristwatch— any minute now things should start happening. He wondered if the dog was riding with his headlight on, as bikers do. Probably not.

Sweat ran down his back.

He did not pay the Land Rover Discovery much heed, as other luxury four-wheel-drive vehicles had passed. This was tourist country, Chobe and Okavango to the west, Makgadikgadi south, Hwange and Vic Falls to the east. The Germans and Americans and the Boers came to do their Livingstone thing here with air-conditioned 4x4s and khaki outfits and safari hats, and they thought the suspect drinking water and a few malaria mosquitoes were a hang of an adventure and went home to show their videos— look, we saw the big five, look how clever, look how brave.

It approached from the direction of Kazungula, and he tried to stare past it to keep watch on the road. Only when it pulled off the road opposite him did he look, half angry because he did not want to be distracted. Two whites in the front of the green vehicle, the thick arm of the passenger hanging over the open window. They looked at him.

“Fuck off,” he called across the road.

The small eyes of the passenger were on him, the face expressionless on the thick neck. He could not see the driver.

“What the fuck are you staring at?” he called again, but they did not answer.

Jissis,

he thought,

what the fuck?

And he raised himself from the hood and looked left and right before he began to cross. He would quickly find out what their story was, but then the vehicle began to move, the big fellow’s eyes still on Mazibuko, and they pulled away and he stood in the middle of the road watching them drive away. What the fuck?

3. THE NATURE OF OPERATION SAFEGUARD

The plan devised by Inkululeko was essentially a disinformation initiative, primarily aimed at directing suspicion away from her.

Although the transcript of the Mohammed interview was in her sole possession, Inkululeko knew suppression thereof would be potentially dangerous and incriminating, due to the fact that both the police (to a lesser extent) and interviewer had some degree of knowledge, which was bound to surface at some time or other.

She approached this office with suggestions that were developed into Safeguard in conjunction with us.

The core of the operation plan was to “hunt down” Inkululeko, to “flush him out.”

Our source recruited the services of a retired intelligence officer from the former military arm of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), one Jonathan (“Johnny”) Kleintjes. This was a particularly brilliant move, for the following reasons:

i. Kleintjes was in charge of MK/ANC intelligence computer systems during the so-called Struggle in the period before 1992.

ii. He was the leader of the project to integrate those systems of the former apartheid government’s intelligence agencies almost a decade ago.

iii. He was suspected of having secured sensitive and valuable information during the process. Like so many of these intelligence rumors, there were different versions. The most persistent was that Kleintjes had found evidence within the mass of electronic information that both the ANC/SACP alliance and the apartheid government had been up to some dirty tricks in the eighties. In addition, a very surprising list of double agents and traitors on both sides, some of them very prominent people, was contained in the data.

iv Kleintjes had apparently deleted these files, but only after making backups and securing it somewhere for possible future use and reference.

Inkululeko’s aim was to use Kleintjes as a credible operatI've (both from a South African and U.S. perspective) for the disinformation project to protect her cover and win his trust at the same time, the latter pertinent to acquiring the missing data at a later stage.

The operation plan was fairly simple: Under her orders, Kleintjes would prepare a hard drive with fabricated intelligence about the “true identity of Inkululeko.” He would then approach the U.S. embassy directly and ask to speak to someone from the CIA about “valuable information.”

We, in turn, would act predictably and tell him never to come to the embassy again but to leave his contact details, as we would be in touch.

A meeting would be set up in Lusaka, Zambia, away from prying eyes, during which the data could be examined by the CIA and, if credible, be bought for the price of $50,000 (about R.575,000).

Obviously, our side of the bargain was to accept the data as the real thing, thereby casting suspicion on the persons mentioned therein and drawing away any possible attention to her as a candidate for the identity of Inkululeko.

She would then write a full report on the operation and present it to the minister of intelligence for further action, bypassing her immediate superior, a man of Zulu extraction whose name would be among the strongest “candidates” for the identity of Inkululeko.

Again, this was a shrewd move, as she was next in line for his position, and the minister would have little choice but to suspend him from duties until the matter had been resolved. Which would have placed her in the top echelon: the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee, chaired by an intelligence coordinator, which brings together the heads of the different services and reports to the cabinet or president.

Unfortunately, Operation Safeguard did not go as planned.

The Ops Room was almost empty.

Janina Mentz sat at the big table and watched one of Rajku-mar’s assistants disconnect the last computer and carry it off piece by piece. The television monitors were off, the radio and telephone equipment’s red and white lights were out, the soul of the place was dead.

A fax lay in front of her, but she had not yet read it.

She thought back over the past two days, trying hard to see the positI've in the whole mess, trying to identify the moment when it all went wrong.

KAATHIEB.

The team leader in Lusaka had sent digital photos via e-mail. The letters in Johnny Kleintjes’s chest were carved in deep red cuts, as if by a raging devil.

LIAR.

“It’s Arabic,” said Rajkumar, once he had completed his search.

How?

How had the Muslims known about Kleintjes?

There were possibilities she dared not even think about.

Had Johnny dropped a word to someone, somewhere? Deliberately? The director had his suspicions that Kleintjes had Islamic connections. But why then would they kill him? It made no sense.

Had she been sold out by the Americans?

No.

Mpayipheli?

Had he made a call for help somewhere along the road? Did he have links with the extremists? Had he, like some of his KGB masters since the fall of the USSR, gone in search of Middle Eastern pastures? Had he built up contacts on the Cape Flats while he worked for Orlando Arendse?

But Kleintjes was supposed to be his friend. That didn’'t fit.

The treachery lay elsewhere.

The treachery lay here. In their midst.

Would it not be ironic to have two traitors in one intelligence unit? But that was the scenario that fitted best.

Luke Powell had said he had lost his two agents yesterday time of death not yet determined, but if the Muslims had left yesterday evening as the news broke here in the Ops Room, then the timetable fitted well.

She dropped her head into her hands, massaging her temples with her fingertips.

Who?

Vincent? The reluctant Radebe?

Quinn, the colored man with Cape Flats roots? Rajkumar? Or one of their assistants? The variables grew too many, and she sighed and sank back into her chair.

The plan was so good. The operation was so clever, so demonically brilliant, her creation. So many flies with one stroke of genius. She was so self-satisfied that she found secret pleasure in it, but it was born of need and panic.

Lord, how that transcript of Ismail Mohammed had shaken her.

All she could think of was her children.

Williams had called her from the police cells and said he had a bomb; he had better meet her at the office. He had played the tape for her and she had to keep cool because he was sitting opposite her and a part of her wondered if the shock was visible on her face. Could he see the paleness that came over her face? The other part was with her children. How was she going to explain to her girls that their mother was a traitor? How would she ever make them understand? How do you explain to someone that there was no big reason, no great ideological motivation, just an evening of succumbing, that strange night in the American embassy, but it had to be held in the light of a lifetime of disappointment, of disillusion, of fruitless struggle and frustration, decades of pointless aspiration that had prepared her for that moment.

Would anyone believe that she had not planned it? It had just happened like an impulse buy at the supermarket. She and Luke Powell were in conversation among forty or fifty people. He had asked her opinion on weighty matters, politics and economics; he had fucking respected her, deferred to her as if she were more than an invisible gear in the great engine room of government. Because the PIU belonged to the director, despite his promises, despite the initial sales talk to recruit her. She made no difference, she had no real power, she was just another civil servant in just another African intelligence agency.

So, in that moment when Luke Powell made his move, all the flotsam and jetsam of her life pressed on her with unbearable weight and she had thrown it off.

Who would ever understand?

Powell made her a player, gave her significance; for the first time in her life her acts were making a difference. Of course, it became easier, after September 11, nobler, but that did not change the fact that it simply just happened.

When Williams turned off the tape recorder she did not trust her voice, but it came out right, soft and easy just as she wished.

“You had better transcribe that personally,” she said to him. Once he had left, she remained sitting in her chair, crushed by the weight, her brain darting this way and that like a cornered rat. Strange how quick the mind was when there was danger, how creative you could be when your existence was threatened. How to draw attention away from yourself? The cells in her brain had dreamed up the Johnny Kleintjes plan out of what had long lain stored away— the rumors that Kleintjes had forbidden data. That had not been a priority with her, just something to store in the files in the back of her head. When the need was greatest, it had come springing out into her consciousness, a germinating seed that would grow diabolically.

So brilliant. Those were Luke Powell’s words.

You are brilliant.

He had appreciated her from the beginning. Sincerely. With each piece of intelligence that she sent to him through the secret channels, the message came back.

You are-priceless. You are wonderful. You are brilliant. You are making a real difference.

And here she sat. Eight months later. Priceless and wonderful and brilliant, with a traitor’s identity that was probably secured, but heads would roll and chances were good that one would be hers.

And that could not happen.

There must be a scapegoat. And there was one.

Ready to sacrifice.

She was not finished. She was not nearly finished.

She smoothed her hair down and pulled the fax nearer.

This was the story the minister was talking about. The one that had appeared in the

Sowetan.

She did not want to read it. She wanted to move on; in her mind this chapter was closed.

MPAYIPHELI— THE PRINCE FROM THE PAST

By Matthew Mtimkulu, assistant editor

isn'’t it strange how much power two words can have? Just two random words, sixteen simple letters, and when I heard them over the radio in my car, it opened the floodgates of the past, and the memories came rushing back like rippling white water.

Thobela Mpayipheli.

I did not think about the meaning of the words— that came later, as I sat down to write this piece: Thobela means “mannered” or “respectful.” Mpayipheli is Xhosa for “one who does not stop fighting”— a warrior, if you will.

My people like to give our children names with a positI've meaning, a sort of head start to life, a potential self-fulfilling prophecy. (Our white fellow-citizens attempt the same sort of thing— only opting not for meaning but for sophistication, the exotic or cool to do the job. And my colored brothers seem to choose names that sound as much uncolored as possible.)

What really matters, I suppose, is the meaning the person gives to the name in the course of his life.

So, what I remembered as I negotiated early-morning rush hour was the man. Or the boy, as I knew him, for Thobela and I are children of the Ciskei; we briefly shared one of the most beautiful places on earth: the Kat river valley, described by historian Noël Mostert in his heartbreaking book Frontiers as “a narrow, beautiful stream that descended from the mountainous heights of the Great Escarpment and flowed through a broad, fertile valley towards the Fish river.”

We were teenagers and it was the blackest decade of the century, the tumultuous seventies: Soweto was burning, and the heat of the flames could be felt in our little hidden hamlet, our forgotten valley. There was something in the air in the spring of 1976, an anticipation of change, of things to come.

Thobela Mpayipheli, like me, was fourteen. A natural athlete, the son of the Muruti of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, and it was well known that his father was a descendant of Phalo along the Maqoma lineage. Xhosa royalty, if you will.

And there was something princely about him, perhaps in his bearing, most definitely in the fact that he was a bit of a loner, a brooding, handsome outsider of a boy One day in late September, I was witness to a rare event. I saw Mpayipheli beat Mtetwa, a huge, mean, scowling kid two years his senior. It was a long time coming between the two of them, and when it happened, it was a thing of beauty. On a sliver of river sand in a bend of the Kat, Thobela was a matador, calm and cool and elegant and quick. He took some shuddering punches, because Mtetwa was no slouch, but Thobela absorbed it and kept on coming. The thing that fascinated me most was not his awesome deftness, his speed or agility, but his detachment. As if he were measuring himself. As if he had to know if he was ready, confirmation of some inner belief.

Just three years later he was gone, and the whispers up and down the valley said he had joined the Struggle, he had left for the front, he was to be a soldier, a carrier of the Spear of the Nation.

And here his name was on the radio, a man on a motorcycle, a fugitive, a common laborer, and I wondered what had happened in the past twenty years. What had gone wrong? The prince should have been a king— of industry, or the military, perhaps a member of Parliament, although, for all his presence, he lacked the gift of the gab, the oily slick-ness of a politician.

So I called his mother. It took some time to track them down, a retired couple in a town called Alice.

She didn’'t know. She had not seen her son in more than two decades. His journey was as much a mystery to her as it was to me. She cried, of course. For all that was lost— the expectations, the possibilities, the potential. The longing, the void in a mother’s heart.

But she also cried for our country and our history that so cruelly conspired to reduce the prince to a pauper.

43.

The late afternoon brought a turning point. With every hour his frustration and impatience grew. He no longer wished to wait there; he wanted to know where the dog was, how far off, how long to wait. His eyes were tired from staring down the road, his body stiff from sitting and standing and leaning against the car. His head was dulled by continually running through his calculations, from speculation and guesswork.

But above all it was the anger that exhausted him; the stoking of the raging flames consumed his energy.

Eventually when the shadows began to lengthen, Captain Tiger Mazibuko leaped from the Golf and picked up a rock and hurled it at the thorn trees where the finches were chittering irritably and he roared something unintelligible and turned and kicked the wheel of the car, threw another stone at the tree, another and another and another, until he was out of breath. He blew down with a hiss of air through his teeth and calm returned.

Mpayipheli was not coming.

He had taken another road. Or the wounds perhaps … No, he was not going to start speculating again— it was irrelevant; his plan had failed and he accepted it. Sometimes you took a chance and you won, and sometimes you lost. He made a decision, he would wait till sunset, relax, watch the day fade to twilight and the twilight to dark, and then he was done.

When he climbed back in the car they came for him.

Three police vehicles full of officials in uniform. He saw the three vehicles approaching, but it registered only when they stopped. He realized what was going on only when they poured out of the doors. He sat tight, hands on the steering wheel, until one shouted at him to get out with his hands behind his head.

He did that slowly and methodically, to prevent misunderstandings.

What the hell?

He stood by the Golf, and a pair of them ducked into the car. One emerged triumphant with the Heckler & Koch. Another searched him with busy hands, pulled his hands behind his back, and clamped the handcuffs around his wrists.

Sold out. He knew it. But how? And by whom?

4. THE EXECUTION OF OPERATION SAFEGUARD

After Johnny Kleintjes had visited the U.S. embassy, we set up contact with him and agreed to meet him in Lusaka.

Inkululeko kept her side of the bargain by duly recording the embassy visit, as well as starting a surveillance program of Kleintjes.

The operation went perfectly according to plan.

Because of the controlled nature of Safeguard, this office did not deem it necessary to allocate more than two people for the Zambia leg. And agents Len Fortenso and Peter Blum from the Nairobi office were drafted for the Lusaka “sale” of the data.

I acted as supervisor from Cape Town and take full responsibility for subsequent events.

Fortenso and Blum confirmed their arrival in Lusaka after a chartered flight from Nairobi. That was the last contact we had with them. Their bodies were found on the outskirts of Lusaka two days later. The cause of death was gunshot wounds to the back of the head.

Allison Healy wrote the lead article with great difficulty. Her concentration was divided between anger at Van Heerden and sadness for the lot of Pakamile.

She had cried when she left him behind, she had hugged him tight, and the ironic part that broke her heart was the way the child had comforted her.

“don'’t be sad. Thobela is coming back tomorrow.” For the sake of the child, she had called every contact and informant who might possibly know something.

“It depends who you believe,” Rassie had said from Laings-burg. “One rumor says he’s wounded. The other says they have shot him dead in Botswana, but I don'’t believe either of them.”

“Shot dead, you say?”

“It’s a lie, Allison. If the Botswana police had shot him, it would have been headline news.”

“And what about the wounding story?”

“Also a load of rubbish. They say a chopper pilot shot him but not with the chopper, you know what I mean. With this kind of thing rumors run wild. All I know is that the RU have gone home, and the whole operation in the Northern Cape has been called off.”

“That is not good news.”

“How do you mean?”

“It could mean that it’s all over. That he is dead.”

“Or that he is over the border.”

“That’s true. Thanks, Rassie. Phone me if you hear something.”

And that was the sum total of information. The other sources knew or said even less, so at last she began with the story, building it paragraph by paragraph, without enthusiasm and with Van Heerden’s betrayal hanging over her like a shadow.

A member of the Presidential Intelligence Unit’s operational staff is under house arrest and awaiting an internal disciplinary hearing after the tragic accidental death of Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi last night.

The rest was more of a review than anything else because they had laid down guidelines for the report, she and the news editor and the editor. The final agreement with the minister was that they would break this news exclusively but sympathetically, sensitive to the nuances of national interest and covert operations. When she was finished she went outside to smoke in the St. George’s Mall and watched the rest of the world on their way home. Streams of people so determined, so serious, so stern, going home just to journey back tomorrow morning, a never-ending cycle to keep body and soul together until the Reaper came. This useless, meaningless life went on with gray efficiency, pitiless: tomorrow there would be other news, the day after, another scandal, another matter dished up to the people in big black sans serif lettering.

Damn Van Heerden. Damn him for being like all other men, damn him for a shoplifter, a swindler.

Damn Thobela Mpayipheli, for deserting a woman and child for a pointless chase across this bloody country. All it would leave was yellowing front pages in newspaper archI'ves. didn’'t he know that next month, next year, no one would even remember except Pakamile Nzululwazi living somewhere in a bloody orphanage, staring out the window every evening, hoping, until that too, like other hopes, faded irrevocably and left nothing but the vicious cycle of waking up and going to sleep.

She crushed the cigarette under her heel.

Fuck them all.

And she knew how to do it.

5. MUSLIM EXTREMIST INVOLVEMENT

Johnny Kleintjes was found executed in a room in the Republican Hotel in Lusaka, the word “KAATHIEB” slashed with a sharp pointed object into his chest— Arabic for “liar.”

This obviously indicates Muslim extremist involvement, and the big question is how local or foreign groups gained knowledge of the operation. The most likely explanation is a leak within the Presidential Intelligence Unit itself— and there are several facts that substantiate this suspicion:

i. The operation was infiltrated at an early stage— the Muslims were in Lusaka, waiting for Kleintjes and the CIA operatI'ves. The PIU was the only agency with knowledge of Kleintjes’s involvement.

ii. After eliminating Fortenso and Blum, the unknown operatI'ves blackmailed Kleintjes’s daughter in Cape Town to bring a specific hard drive to Lusaka. (She asked one Thobela Mpayipheli, a former friend and colleague of Kleintjes Senior, to do this on her behalf, as she is physically challenged— see below.) The suspected Muslim group, I believe, was not after the fabricated Kleintjes data but the information he had allegedly secreted during the 1994 integration process.

iii. From this follows the obvious: the extremists have a mole within the PIU and suspected the mole’s identity was going to be compromised by the data.

iv Kleintjes himself was known for his Middle Eastern sympathies and could have been protecting the Muslim mole.

v. Furthermore, the PIU member arrested by Botswana police was waiting in ambush to intercept Mpayipheli and the hard drive, close to the Zambian border. We believe the Botswana authorities were tipped off to stop the drive (containing the information about the Muslim mole) from falling into the hands of the PIU. The only people who knew he was waiting in Botswana are part of a small, exclusive group within the PIU.

The only remaining question, in my opinion, is not if Islamic extremists have an operatI've within the SA Presidential Intelligence Unit, but who it is. From this, it naturally follows that the original data might shed some light on the Muslim mole within the South African intelligence community

At this time, the hard drive is still missing.

6. THE MATTER OF UMZINGELI

In 1984 a top CIA field agent and a decorated, much valued veteran, Marion Dorffling, was eliminated in Paris. The modus operandi of the assassin was similar to at least eleven (11) similar executions of U.S. assets and operatI'ves.

The CIA had enough intelligence from Russian and Eastern European sources to conclude, or at least strongly suspect, that one Thobela Mpayipheli, code name Umzingeli (a Xhosa word for “hunter”) was responsible for the murder. According to available information, Mpayipheli was an MK soldier on loan from the ANC/SACP alliance to the KGB and Stasi as a wet work specialist.

Coincidently I was a rookie member of the CIA team in Paris at the time.

When Mpayipheli’s involvement in Operation Safeguard became public knowledge, I filed a request to the field office in Berlin for possible documentation from former Stasi files to confirm the 1984 suspicions.

Our colleagues in Germany obliged within hours (for which I can only commend them).

The Stasi records confirmed that Mpayipheli/Umzingeli was Marion Dorffling’s assassin.

I notified Langley and the response from deputy director’s level was that the Firm was still very much interested in leveling the score. Two specialized field agents from the London office were dispatched to deal with the matter.

Allison Healy’s fingers danced lightly but intensely across the keyboard. Her passion appeared in the words on the screen.

fugitive motorcyclist Thobela Mpayipheli was a ruthless assassin for the KGB during the Cold War, responsible for the deaths of at least fifteen people.

According to his longtime friend and former policeman, Dr. Zatopek van Heerden, Mpayipheli was recruited by the Soviets during MK training in what was then the USSR. Van Heerden is currently a staff member of the UCT Department of Psychology.

She scanned it quickly before continuing, suppressing with difficulty the impulse to write, “his longtime friend, the world-class asshole Dr. Zatopek van Heerden.”

In an exclusive and frank interview, Dr. Van Heerden disclosed that

The phone rang and she grabbed it up angrily and said, “Allison Healy” and Van Heerden asked, “Have you got a passport?” and she said, “What?”

“Have you got a passport?”

“You asshole,” she said.

“What?”

“You are a total, complete, utter asshole,” she said before realizing her voice was so loud that her colleagues could hear. She took the cell phone and walked toward the bathrooms, speaking in a whisper now, “You think you can fuck me and run off like a … like a…”

“Are you cross because I didn’'t leave a message?”

“You could have phoned, you bastard. What would it have taken to make one call? What would it have cost to say thank you and good-bye, it was good, but it’s over. You men are all the same, too fucking cowardly—”

“Allison—”

“But not last night, oh no, last night you couldn'’t talk enough, all the things that you said, and today not a bloody word. Couldn'’t you lift a finger to press a telephone button?”

“Allison, are you interested in—”

“I am interested in nothing to do with you.”

“Would you like to meet Thobela Mpayipheli?”

The words were queuing up behind her tongue, but she swallowed them down. He had taken the wind from her sails.

“Thobela?”

“If you have a passport, you can come along.”

“Where to?”

“Botswana. We are leaving in … er … seventy minutes.”

“We?”

“Do you want to come, or not?”

44.

He had to give her the last directions over the cell phone, as it was an obscure route at the Cape Town International Airport behind hangars and office buildings and between small single-propeller airplanes that looked like children’s toys left around in loose rows. Eventually she found the Beechcraft King Air ambulance with its Pratt & Whitney engines already running.

Van Heerden was standing in the door of the plane, waving to her, and she grabbed the overnight bag from the backseat, locked the car, and ran.

He stood aside so she could climb the steps and then he pulled the door shut behind her, signaling to the pilot. The Beechcraft began to move.

He took her bag and showed her where to sit— on one of the three seats at the back. After making sure her seat belt was fastened, he sat down beside her with a sigh. He leaned over and kissed her full on the lips before she could pull away, and then he grinned at her like a naughty schoolboy.

“I should—,” she began seriously, but he stopped her with a hand.

“May I explain first?” His voice was loud, to be heard over the engine noise.

“It’s not about us. It’s about Miriam Nzululwazi.”

“Miriam,” he said with grim foreboding.

“She’s dead, Zatopek. Last night.”

“How?”

“All they say is that it was an accident. She fell. five stories down.”

“Good Lord,” he said, and let his head drop back against the cushion of the seat. He sat like that for a long time, staring ahead, and she wondered what his thoughts were. Then just before the Beechcraft sped down the runway, he said something she couldn'’t hear and shook his head.

“You have a terrible temper,” he said as the roar of the engines quieted at cruising altitude and he loosened his safety belt. “Do you want some coffee?”

“And you are a bastard,” she said without conviction.

“I was in conference all day.”

“Without tea or lunch breaks?”

“I meant to phone you in the afternoon, when it was more quiet.”

“And so?”

“Then I had a call from a Dr. Pillay of Kasane, who said he had found my telephone number in the pocket of a badly injured black man who had fallen off his motorbike in northern Botswana.”

“Oh.”

“Coffee?”

She nodded, watching him as he made the same offer to the doctor and pilot in the cockpit. She thought how close she had come to putting the article into the system. She had been at the door of the editorial office when she turned and ran back to delete it. She had a temper. That was true.

“What is his condition?” she asked Van Heerden when he came back.

“Serious but stable. The doctor said he has lost a lot of blood. They gave him transfusions, but he is going to need more and blood is in short supply up there.”

“What happened to him?”

“Nobody knows. He has two bullet wounds in the hip, and his left shoulder was badly bruised in the fall. Some locals found him beside the road near the Mpandamatenga turnoff. By the grace of God, no one phoned the authorities; they just loaded him on a bakkie and took him to Kasane.”

She absorbed the news, and another question arose. “Why are you doing this?”

“He is my friend.” Before she could respond, he added, “My only friend, to be honest,” and she wondered about him, who he was and what made him this way.

“And this”— she indicated the medical equipment—“what is all this going to cost?”

“I don'’t know. Ten or twenty thousand.”

“Who is going to pay?”

He shrugged. “I will. Or Thobela.”

“Just like that?”

He grinned but without humor.

“What?”

“Perception and reality,” he said. “I find it very interesting.”

“Oh?”

“Your perception is that he is black— and a laborer, from Guguletu. Therefore, he must be poor. That is the logical view, a reasonable conclusion. But things are not always what we expect.”

“So he has money? Is that from the drugs or the assassinations?”

“A valid question. But the answer is ‘not from either of those.’ ”

He saw her shake her head dubiously, and he said, “I had better tell you the whole story. About me and Orlando and Thobela and more American dollars than most people see in a lifetime. It was two years ago. I was moonlighting as a private investigator, probing a murder case the cops couldn'’t crack. In a nutshell, it came out that the victim was involved in a clandestine army operation, weapons transactions for UNITA in Angola, diamonds and dollars…”

He finished the story by the time they landed in Johannesburg to refuel. When they took off again, she pushed up the armrest between them and leaned against him. “Am I still a bastard?” he asked.

“Yes. But you are my bastard,” and she pressed her face in his neck and inhaled his smell with her eyes shut.

That afternoon she had thought she had lost him.

Before they flew over the N 1 somewhere east of Warmbad, she was asleep.

She stayed in the plane, looking out the oval window of the Beechcraft. The air coming in the open door was hot and rich in exotic scents. Outside the night was lit up by car lights, the moving people casting long deep shadows, and then four appeared from behind a vehicle with a stretcher between them, and she wondered what he looked like, this assassin, drug soldier, the man for whom Miriam Nzululwazi had wept in her arms, the man who had dodged the entire country’s law enforcers for two thousand kilometers to do a friend a favor. What did he look like? Were there marks, recognizable features on his face that would reveal his character?

They struggled up the steps with the weighty burden. She went to sit at the back, out of the way, her eyes searching, but he was hidden by the bearers, Van Heerden, the doctor who had flown with them, Dr. Pillay and one other. They shifted him carefully onto the bed in the aircraft. The white doctor connected a tube to the thick black arm, the Indian said something softly into the patient’s ear, pressing the big hand that lay still, and then they went out and someone pulled the door up and the pilot started the engines.

She stood up to see his face. The eyes caught hers, like a searchlight finding a buck, black-brown and frighteningly intense, so that she could see nothing else, and she felt a thrill of fear and enormous relief. Fear for what he could do, and relief that he would not do it to her.

The black man slept and Van Heerden sat with her again and she asked, “Have you told him?”

“It was the first thing he wanted to know when he saw me.”

“You told him?”

He nodded.

She looked at the still figure, the dark brown skin of his chest and arms against the white bedding, the undulations of caged power.

William Blake, she thought.

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He hasn’t said a word since.”

Now she understood the intensity of those eyes.

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

“Do you think he will…”

She looked at Van Heerden and for the first time saw the worry.

“How else?” he said in frustration.

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

“But you can help him. There must be a legal—” “It is not he who will need help.”

That’s when she grasped what Van Heerden was afraid of, and she looked at Mpayipheli and shI'vered.

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

On the last leg to Cape Town she woke with a heavy body and a stiff neck and she saw Van Heerden sitting next to Mpayipheli, his white hand holding the Xhosa’s, and she heard the deep bass voice, soft, the words nearly inaudible to her above the engines, and she closed her eyes again and listened.

“… go away, Van Heerden? Is that part of our genetic makeup, too? Is that what makes us men? Always off somewhere?” He spoke in slow, measured tones.

“Why was it that I could not say no? She knew, from the beginning. She said men go away. She said that is our nature, and I argued with her, but she was right. We are like that. I am like that.”

“Thobela, you can’t—”

“Do you know what life is? It is a process of disillusionment. It frees you of your illusions about people. You start out trusting everyone, you find your role models and strive to be like them and then you are disappointed by one after the other and it hurts, Van Heerden, it is a painful road to walk and I never understood why it must be so, but now I do. It is because every time the hope in you dies a little, with every disillusion, each disappointment in others becomes a disappointment in yourself. If others are weak, that weakness lies in you. It is like death: when you see others die, you know it lies in wait for you. I am so tired of it, Van Heerden, I am so tired of being disillusioned, of seeing all these things in people and in myself, the weakness, the pain, the evil.”

“It’s—”

“You were right. I am what I am. I can deny it, I can suppress it… and hide it, but not forever. Life does as it will, it throws you around. Yesterday there was a moment I realized I was living again. For the first time in … a long time. That I was doing something meaningful. With satisfaction. That I was vibrating inside and outside, in time, in rhythm. And do you know what was my first reaction? To feel guilty, as if that canceled out the meaning of Miriam and Pakamile. But I have had time to think, Van Heerden. I understand it better. It is not what I am that is wrong. It is what I use it for. Or let it be used for. That was my mistake. I allowed other people to decide. But no more. No more.”

“You have to rest.” “I will.”

“I left money with the doctor for the motorbike. They will send it down with a transport carrier in a week or so.” “Thank you, Van Heerden.” “We land in twenty minutes,” said the pilot.

NOVEMBER

45.

On her lunch hour, Allison Healy drove out to Morning-side with the long parcel and takeout on the backseat. Mpayipheli sat on the veranda in the sun, his bare torso showing the bright white bandage around his waist.

She walked toward him with the parcel in her hand.

“I hope this is what you wanted.”

He pulled off the gaudy gift-wrapping with its multicolored African motif.

“They insisted on wrapping it,” she apologized.

He held the assegai in his hands, tested the strength of the steel, drew a finger down the edge of the blade.

“Thank you very much,” he said quietly.

“Is it… good enough?”

“It is perfect,” he said. He would have to shorten it, saw off more than half of the shaft, but he would not spoil her effort with details.

She put the bowls of curry and plastic cutlery on the table. “Would you prefer a proper knife and fork?”

“No, thank you.” He leaned the assegai against the table and took his food.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Much better.”

“I’m glad.”

“I want to start on Monday, Allison.”

“Monday? Are you sure?”

“I can’t wait any longer.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I will show you.”

Quinn phoned her from the airport.

“The name is false and they paid in cash, ma’am, but the pilot’s flight plan was submitted according to regulations. There is not much we can do.”

“What does he say?”

“They landed in Chobe, ma’am. That’s almost on the Zambian border. The patient was a big black man with two gunshot wounds in the hip. His condition was stable. They gave him about two liters of blood. The other two were white, a man and a woman. The woman had red hair, plump and light-skinned. The man was dark and lean, of average height. He and the black man spoke in Afrikaans, he and the woman spoke English. When they arrived they transferred the patient to a station wagon or a four-wheel drive, he’s not sure. They did not take the plate number.”

“Thank you, Quinn.”

“What shall I do with the pilot?”

“Just thank him and come back.”

TRANSCRIPT: Commission of Inquiry into the death of Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi (38). 7 November.

PRESENT: Chairman: Adv. B. O. Ndlovu. Assessors: Adv. P. du T. Mostert, Mr. K. J. Maponyane. For the PIU: Ms. J. M. Mentz. Witnesses: No witnesses were called.

CHAIRMAN: Mr. Radebe, according to article 16 of the Intelligence Services Act of 1994, as amended, you have the right to representation during these proceedings. Have you waI'ved this right?

RADEBE: I have, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Do you understand the nature of the inquiry and the charge of misconduct against you? RADEBE: I understand it.

CHAIRMAN: According to article 16(c), you are entitled to representation by a person in your department, and if no such person is available or suitable, by someone outside your department, are you aware of this right?

RADEBE: I am, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Do you waI've your right to representation?

RADEBE: Yes.

CHAIRMAN: According to article 15(1), you are required to prepare a written admission or rejection of the charge against you. Has this document, as submitted by you, been composed of your own free will?

RADEBE: It has, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Would you read it to this committee, please?

RADEBE: I Vincent Radebe, admit that my conduct and actions hindered and complicated an official operation of the Presidential Intelligence Unit.

I admit that through gross negligence I was responsible for the death of Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi on 26 October of this year. I neglected to lock the door of the interview room, which resulted directly in Mrs. Nzululwazi’s leaving the room without escort and in a disturbed state of mind. Her fatal fall from the fire escape of the building was a direct result of my conduct.

I admit, further, that on the same day I unlawfully and without official sanction abducted the six-year-old son of Mrs. Nzululwazi and kept him at my abode overnight. I admit that on 27 October I handed over the boy Pakamile, to personnel of the

Cape Times

and thereby undermined an official operation of the Presidential Intelligence Unit.

I declare that I acted alone in both instances and wish to blame or involve no other person.

I wish to plead the following mitigating factors, Mr. Chairman: When I made my career choice on completion of my studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, it was my genuine desire to make a positI've contribution to this country. Like so many of my compatriots, I was inspired by the forgiving and positI've vision of Mr. Nelson Mandela. I also wished to dedicate my life to the building of the rainbow nation. The Presidential Intelligence Unit, in my opinion, presented me that opportunity But sometimes passion and dedication are not enough. Sometimes zeal blinds us to our own faults and shortcomings.

I understand that the protection of the state and the democracy sometimes demands difficult decisions and actions from its office bearers, actions whereby ordinary and innocent civilians are sometimes directly and negatI'vely affected.

I know now that I am not suited to this career— and never was. The incidents of 26, 27, and 28 October were extremely traumatic for me. I was deeply disturbed by the manner in which, in my opinion, the basic human rights of, first, Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli and later Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi were infringed upon. Even now, as I read this document, I am unable to grasp how the purpose of the operation, however important or vital to national security it might have been, justified the means. My mistake, Mr. Chairman, was to allow my dismay to affect my good judgment. I was negligent when I should have been diligent. I regret deeply my part in Mrs. Nzululwazi’s death and particularly that I did not make a stronger stand or protest more vigorously through official channels. My greatest weakness was to doubt my own judgment of right and wrong. This country and its people deserve better than that, but I can assure you that that will never happen again.

That is all, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Radebe. Do you agree that this document be recorded as written admission of the charge against you?

RADEBE: I agree.

CHAIRMAN: Have you any questions, Mrs. Mentz?

MENTz: I have, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Proceed.

MENTZ: Vincent, do you believe that part of, as you would call it, the building of the rainbow nation is to supply classified information to the intelligence services of other nations?

RADEBE: No, ma’am.

MENTZ: Then why did you?

RADEBE: I did no such thing.

MENTZ: Do you deny that that during the operation you supplied information to Muslim extremist groups?

RADEBE: I deny that emphatically

CHAIRMAN: Mrs. Mentz, do you have proof of these allegations?

MENTZ: Mr. Chairman, we have tangible evidence that key information was leaked to an international network of Muslim extremists. We cannot directly link Vincent with this process, but his undermining behavior speaks for itself.

CHAIRMAN: I have two problems here, Mrs. Mentz. First, Mr. Radebe has not been charged with high treason but with negligence. Second, your allegations rest on circumstantial evidence, which I cannot allow

MENTz: With respect, Mr. Chairman, I do not believe that leaving the interview room door unlocked was negligence. I believe it was deliberate.

CHAIRMAN: Your allegations must be proved, Mrs. Mentz.

MENTZ: The truth will out.

CHAIRMAN: Do you wish to submit evidence, Mrs. Mentz?

MENTZ: No.

CHAIRMAN: Do you have any further questions?

MENTZ: No.

CHAIRMAN: Do you wish to introduce evidence regarding further questions, Mr. Radebe?

RADEBE: No, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN: Mr. Radebe, this commission of inquiry has no choice but to find you guilty of misconduct as noted. We take note of your presentation of mitigating circumstances. This commission is adjourned until 14:00, when we will consider actions to be taken against you.

As the woman drove out of the parking garage at Wale Street Chambers, Allison Healy followed her with her heart in her throat. Mpayipheli lay flat on the rear seat. They drove through the city always four of five car lengths behind, down the Heeren-gracht, onto the Ni, and then east toward the northern suburbs.

“Please don'’t lose her,” came the deep voice from the back.

It was Williams, who had begun the thing, who nearly ended it.

Williams who knew everyone, but no one knew him. Williams whom she had plucked out of the SAPS, an affirmatI've action appointee wasting his time behind a desk somewhere in the regional commissioner’s office. The rumors had spread over the Western Cape in fragments: twenty-eight years in the police and never took a bribe. If you want to know something, ask Williams. If you need someone you can trust, get Williams. A colored man from the heart of the Flats, joined the force without finishing high school and climbed the ladder like a phantom, without powerful friends or powerful enemies, without fanfare, the invisible man.

Just what she wanted, and it was so easy to get him. Merely the sincere promise that he would never again be chained to a desk did the trick.

“Janina,” he said. He had called her that from the beginning. “Do you want his address?” His tone of voice was somewhere between irony and seriousness.

“Go for it,” she said, and picked up a pen.

“I expect that you will find him at the house of a Dr. Zatopek van Heerden, plot seventeen, Morning Star.”

“A medical doctor?”

“That I cannot say.”

“How, Williams?”

“They brought the motorbike in through the Martin’s Drift border post, ma’am. On a three-tonner, without papers, and the story that it belongs to a South African who had an accident somewhere in northern Botswana.”

“And they let him in?”

“Money changed hands.”

“And?”

“The driver had an address with him that was copied down.”

“How did you … ?”

“Oh, I hear things.”

46.

The Stasi records confirmed that Mpayipheli/Umzingeli was Marion Dorffling’s assassin.

I notified Langley, and the response from deputy director’s level was that the Firm was still very much interested in leveling the score. Two specialized field agents from the London office were dispatched to deal with the matter.

After the tip-off from Inkululeko, the agents flew to northern Botswana, acquired a vehicle, and made visual contact with the PIU Reaction Unit member who was waiting in ambush for Mpayipheli. They witnessed the arrest of the Reaction Unit member by Botswana authorities but, despite waiting at the roadside through the night, could not intercept Mpayipheli or the hard drive.

They returned to Cape Town and were about to leave for London when the urgent contact signal was received from Inkululeko (she leaves her car’s indicator on in her home driveway). When contact was established, Inkululeko supplied the address where Mpayipheli was apparently recuperating from wounds sustained during his cross-country flight. She granted us three hours before the PIU Reaction Unit would reach the same address.

The image that remained with Allison Healy afterward was the one of blood— the carotid artery that kept pumping spouts of the liquid, first against the wall and later onto the floor, powerful jets in an impossibly high arc that gradually lessened until the fountain of life dried up with repulsive finality.

In long discussions afterward with Van Heerden she would try to purge it from her mind by reconstructing the events over and over again. Try to analyze her emotions from where they had stood as they ate their meal through to the end of it all one day later.

They sat at the table in Van Heerden’s kitchen. At Mpayipheli’s request, he had made coq au vin in the traditional Provençal manner. The serving dish stood in the middle of the table, steaming a heavenly aroma, golden couscous in a dish alongside. Three people in a happy domestic scene, the Xhosa man’s hunger practically visible on his face, the way he eyed the food, eager posture, hands ready, impatient for her to finish serving.

It was a pleasant occasion, a convivial gathering, a mental photograph frozen in time to take out and remember with satisfaction later.

Don Giovanni playing in the sitting room, a baritone aria that she was unfamiliar with but that fell with melodious machismo on her ear, the man she was beginning to love beside her, who continually surprised her with his cooking skill, his fanatical love of Mozart, his deep friendship with the black man, his ongoing teasing of the both of them. And Thobela, who carried his grief for Miriam Nzululwazi with so much grace— how her perception of him had changed. A week ago on the plane he and his past had filled her with fear, but now tenderness grew in her out of the conversations on the veranda when he related his life to her. There were moments when he described how he had met Miriam and how their love and companionship had blossomed that she had to fight back the tears. Here they sat now on the eve of his attempt to claim Pakamile, the future full of promise for everyone and the world, a wonderful moment framed in the dark reflection of a red wine glass.

She would never be sure if she had heard the sound. Perhaps, but even if she had, her untrained ear could never have distinguished it from others, nor her consciousness read danger in it.

Mpayipheli had moved with purpose, one moment in the chair beside her, the next a mass of kinetic energy moving in the direction of the sitting room, and then everything happened at once. Chaos and noise that she could only sort chronologically with great difficulty after the fact. First the dull thud of human bodies colliding with great force, then the apologetic reports of a silenced firearm, a short staccato of four-five-six shots followed by the crack of the coffee table breaking, shouts of men like bellowing animals, and she found herself in the doorway of the living room, the only light shining over her shoulder, and all she could see was rolling shadows and half-light.

Mpayipheli and a man were on the ground, writhing and grunting for life or death, the silver flash of a steel blade in between, and another man, tall and athletic on the other side of the room with a gun in his hand, the long snout of a silencer searching out a target on the floor, but calm and calculating, unhurried by the frenetic motion of the two figures.

And then Van Heerden. She had not seen him leave the kitchen, was unaware that he had gone out the other door into the passage. Only when the tall man placed his gun on the floor did she realize that Van Heerden was holding the double-barreled shotgun to the man’s head, and he called to her, “Allison, go into the kitchen, close the door,” but she was frozen. Why couldn'’t she move? Why couldn'’t she react? she would ask herself and Van Heerden over and over in the weeks afterward.

Mpayipheli and the other one stood up against each other; his opponent, the one with the knife, had small eyes close together and a thick neck on massive shoulders.

“Tiny,” Van Heerden called, and threw something across the room that the Xhosa deftly caught.

Tiny.

Everything regressed, everything rolled back to an ancient time, and the one with the neck said, “Amsingelly” with his head lowered and his broad-bladed knife weaving in front of him.

“Umzingeli.” Thobela’s voice was a deep growl and then softer, much softer: “Mayibuye.”

“What fucking language is that, nigger?”

“Xhosa.” And she would never forget the look on Mpayipheli’s face, the light from the kitchen slanting onto it, and there was something indescribable there, a strange illumination, and then she saw the object he had plucked out of the air— it was the assegai, the one she had bought for him in the curio shop on Long Street.

This office has been unable to re-establish contact with the two agents and can only assume that the mission was not a success.

Inkululeko has been unable to supply any information as to what transpired at the house that belongs to a member of a local University’s department of psychology.

We will continue to pursue the matter but regret to inform you that we have to presume the worst.

“He’s not here, ma’am,” screamed Captain Tiger Mazibuko over the phone with a raging frustration that made her shudder.

“Tiger …”

“The doctor is here and he says if we don'’t leave within fifteen minutes, we will never see the hard drive again. And a redhead who says she is from the press. Something happened here, there’s blood on the walls and the furniture is fucked, but the dog is not here and these fucking people won’t cooperate… .”

“Tiger.” Her voice was stern and sharp, but he ignored her, he was out of his mind. “No,” he said. “I am finished. Totally fucking finished. I’ve already made a cunt of myself, I am finished. I didn’'t sit for two fucking days in a cell in Botswana for this. I didn’'t sign up for this. I will not expose my people to this. Enough, it’s fucking enough.”

She tried calm. “Tiger, slow down. …”

“Christ, jissis,” he said, and he sounded as if he would cry.

“Tiger, let me speak to the doctor.”

“I’m finished,” he said.

“Tiger, please.”

High on the slopes of the Tygerberg in the heart of a white neighborhood, he climbed out of Van Heerden’s car. He was one block away from his destination, because there could be eyes, possibly two sets in a vehicle in front of the door and one or two bodyguards inside.

He moved purposefully to the dark patches on the sidewalk, because a black man here in the small hours was out of place. On the street corner he stopped. The Cape night opened up for him, a fairy tale of a thousand flickering lights as far as the eye could see, from Milnerton in the west the coastline swept down to the lit carbuncle of the mountain. The city lay there like a slowly beating heart, the arteries curling away to Groote Schuur and Observatory and Rosebank and Newlands, and from there the Flats made a curve east, through Khayalitsha and Guguletu to Kraaifontein and Stellenbosch and Somerset West. Rich and poor, shoulder to shoulder, sleeping now, a resting giant.

He stood, hands by his side. He looked.

Because tomorrow would be his last day here.

Somewhere between three and four in the morning a part of Janina Mentz’s consciousness dragged her from a deep sleep. A sense that all was not right— a panicky, suffocating feeling. She opened her eyes with a jerk of her body, and the big black hand was over her mouth and she smelled him, the sweat, saw the blood on the torn clothes, saw the short assegai in his hand, and she made a sound of terror, her body instinctively shrinking away from him.

“My name,” he said, “is Thobela Mpayipheli.”

He pressed the blade to her throat and said, “We don'’t want to wake the children.”

She moved her head up and down, pulling the sheets instinctively up over her chest where her heart leaped around like a wild animal.

“I am going to take my hand off your mouth. I want only two things from you, and then I will leave. Do you understand?”

Again she nodded.

He lifted his hand, shifting the blade away from her, but still he was too close to her, his eyes watchful.

“Where is Pakamile?”

Her voice would not function, it came hoarsely through her dry mouth that failed to form words. She had to start over. “He is safe.”

“Where?”

“I don'’t know the exact place.”

“You lie.” And the blade came nearer.

“No … Welfare, they took him.”

“You will find out.”

“I will. I… there isn'’t… Tomorrow I’ll have to …”

“You will find out tomorrow.” And her head worked frantically up and down in confirmation, her heart had slowed a fraction.

“Tomorrow morning at eleven you will have Pakamile at the underground parking lot of the waterfront. If he is not there, I will send a copy of the hard drive to every newspaper in the country, understand?”

“Yes.” Grateful that her voice flowed more easily now.

“Eleven o’clock. Do not be late.”

“I won’t.”

“I know where you live,” he said, and stood up. And then he was gone, the room empty, and she took a deep breath before slowly getting out of bed and going to the bathroom to throw up.

47.

Bodenstein saw the GS stop in the street just before opening, and he knew he knew the rider but recognized him only when Mpayipheli removed the helmet. “Fuck,” said Bodenstein, and went out, amazed. “Thobela,” he said. “I came to pay you.” “Look at the bloody bike.” “A few scrapes. It’s fine.” “A few scrapes?”

“I'’ve come to buy it, Bodenstein.” “You what?”

“And I need another helmet. One of those System Fours that we only have in small sizes left. There are still a couple in the storeroom behind those boxes the exhausts came in.”

It was just Van Heerden and him in the parking garage. He stood by the motorbike; Van Heerden sat in his car with the CIA agent’s silenced machine pistol.

Allison had chosen not to come.

At one minute to eleven a black man came walking toward him from the shopping center entrance with a long, confident stride, and he knew instinctively that it was Mazibuko— he matched the voice and the rage to the physical before him.

“I will get you, dog,” said Mazibuko.

“Where is Pakamile?”

“I’m telling you I will get you. One day when this data is not important anymore, I will find you and I will kill you, as God is my witness, I am going to kill you.”

They faced each other and he felt the hate radiating from the man, and the temptation was strong, the fighting blood welled up in him.

“The question you must ask, Mazibuko, is whether there is more in you than just the anger you feel. What is left if that is gone?”

“Fuck you, Xhosa.” Spittle sprayed.

“Are they using you? Are they using the rage that is eating you?”

“Shut up, you dog. Come, take me now, you fucking coward.” Tiger’s body leaned forward, but an invisible thread held him back.

“Ask yourself: how long until it’s no longer useful, before things change. A new administration or a new system or a new era. They are using you, Mazibuko. Like a piece of equipment.”

Captain Tiger Mazibuko cracked at that moment, his hand went to the bulky bulge under his jacket and it was only the sharp voice of Janina Mentz that made him waver a moment, an authoritarian cry of his nickname, and he stood, torn between two alternatives, his eyes wild, his body a hair trigger, his fingers on the butt of the gun, and then Mpayipheli said quietly: “I am not alone, Tiger. You are dead before you can point that thing.”

“Tiger,” Janina called again.

Like a man on high wire, he struggled with balance.

“don'’t let them use you,” said Mpayipheli again.

Tiger dropped his hand, speechless.

“Where is the hard drive?” he heard Mentz’s voice from somewhere between the cars.

“Safe,” he said. “Where is Pakamile?”

“In the car back here. If you want the child, you will have to give it to Tiger.”

“You don'’t understand your alternatives.”

“That is what you don'’t understand. The child for the hard drive. Non-negotiable.”

“Watch me carefully. I am going to take a cell phone out of my pocket. And then I am going to phone a reporter from the Cape Times. …

”

Mazibuko stood before him, watching his every move, but his eyes had changed. The wildness had gone, and there was something else growing.

He took out the cell phone, held it in front of him, and keyed in the number.

“It’s ringing,” he said.

“Wait!” screamed Mentz.

“I have waited enough,” he said.

“I will get the boy.”

“Please hold on,” he said over the phone, and then to Mentz: “I am waiting.”

He saw Mazibuko turn away from him.

“You stay here,” he said, but Mazibuko did not hear. He was walking toward the exit, and Thobela saw something in the set of the shoulders that he understood.

“You have two choices in life,” he said so only he could hear it. “You can be a victim. Or not.”

Then he saw Pakamile and the child saw him, and the moment threatened to overcome him completely.

The white Mercedes-Benz stopped at the traffic lights and one of the street hawkers with packs of white plastic clothes hangers and sunshades for cars and little brown teddy bears knocked on the window and the driver let it slide down electronically.

“The hard drive is safe,” said the driver, not in his natI've Zulu tongue but in English. “Not in our possession, but I believe it is absolutely secure.”

“I will pass it on,” said the hawker.

“Allah Akhbar,” said the small man, his delicate fingers relaxed on the steering wheel, and then the light changed to green up ahead and he put the car in gear.

“Allah Akhbar,” said the hawker, “God is great,” and watched the car drive away.

The driver switched on the radio as the announcer said, “And here is the new one from David Kramer, singing with his new find, Koos Kok, ‘The Ballad of the Lonely Motorbike Rider’ …”

He smiled and ran a finger under the snow-white shirt collar to relieve the pressure a fraction against the small hump.

Reverend Lawrence Mpayipheli was busy searching for the ripest tomatoes and snipping them loose with the pruning shears, the scent of the cut stems full in his nose, the plump firmness of the red fruit under his fingers, when he heard the engine before the door and stood up stiffly from behind the high green bushes. There were two of them on the motorbike, a big man and a little boy and he thought, It can’t be, and he prayed just a short Lord, please, aloud, there in the middle of the vegetable garden. He waited for them to take off the hard hats so he could be sure, so he could call his wife in the clear voice that could reverberate across the backyards of Alice like the ringing of a church bell.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As usual, I am indebted to so many people and sources who contributed to this book. I can never thank you enough.

The Afrikaans Language and Culture Society’s grant made it possible to take the GS on most of the routes described in the book and do a motorcycle tour of the Kat river valley and research in Grahamstown.

Lisa Ncetani and the long, long list of Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, Sotho, and Ndebele copassengers on business flights between Cape Town and Johannesburg, shop attendants, shoeshine men, taxi drivers, and porters: thank you for answering my questions so patiently and helping a white Afrikaner understand a little better.

One of the more unsettling discoveries during the research was how little material is available about the more recent Xhosa lifestyle, culture, and history— especially on the Internet. But Timothy Stapleton’s Maqoma— Xhosa Resistance to Colonial Advance (Jonathan Ball, 1994) and Noël Mostert’s excellent Frontiers (Pimlico, 1992) were two indispensable sources.

Dr. Julia C. Wells, historian at the University of Grahamstown, provided insightful information and comments on the history and development of the short stabbing spear, or assegai.

Muneer Manie helped with the Arabic, and Ronnie Kasrils’s book Armed & Dangerous (Mayibuye, 1993,1998) was a similarly rich source of information on Umkhonto we Sizwe and the role of the East Germans and Soviet Russia during the Struggle.

Intriguing and stimulating conversations with the late Reverend Harwood Dixon, who was a missionary in the Eastern Cape for many years, and the enigmatic Professor Dap Louw from the University of the Free State’s Psychology Department had a great influence on the characters in the book. Similarly, I am indebted to Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works (W W Norton & Company, 1997), John L. Casti’s

Paradigms Regained (Abacus, 2000), Richard Dawkins’s

river Out of Eden (Phoenix, 2001), Desmond Morris’s

The Naked Eye (Ebury Press, 2000), Brian Mas-ters’s ever re-readable

The Evil That Men Do (Black Swan, 1996), and Geoffrey Miller’s excellent

The Mating Mind (Vintage, 2001).

I constantly made use of the Internet archI'ves of Die Burger, Beeld, and Die Volksblad.

Other websites that provided essential information were Kalshnikov (www.kalashnikov.guns.ru), Valery Shilin’s Gun Club (www.club.guns.ru), the U.S. Marines (www.hqmc.usmc.mil), Denel (www.denel.co.za), Heckler & Koch (www.heckler-koch.de), Frikkie Potgieter’s rich source on the SADF and SANDF (http://members.tripod.com/samagte/index. html), Frans Nel’s Griekwa Afrikaans (www.ugie.co.za), the Intelligence Resource Program (FAS) (www.fas.org), and the Central Intelligence Agency (www.cia.gov).

To my agent in London, Isobel Dixon: thank you for not giving up on finding a U.S. publisher. To my American editor, Judy Clain: thank you for believing and for this incredible opportunity.

And to the world’s best copyeditor, Stephen H. Lamont: thank you for that magic blue pencil.

Finally, to my wife, Anita: without your love, support, and faith, this would not have happened.

Deon Meyer

Melkbosstrand

March 2004

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deon Meyer is a freelance strategic consultant in Cape Town, South Africa. He started his career as a newspaper reporter and worked at the University of the Free State, in advertising and Internet strategy, before starting his own company in 2000. He lives in Melkbosstrand with his wife, Anita, and their four children. His Afrikaans novels have been translated into English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Czech, and Bulgarian. He has won the ATKV literary prize twice, the French Le Grand Prix de Littérature Poli-cičre in 2003, and has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award and M-Net Literary Award. He is passionate about Mozart, cooking, Free State and Springbok rugby, and BMW motorcycles.