Killer Elite

25

… For ten years they had seen each other well away from Tokai, and in between Anne’s regular visits to her husband’s hospital bed. Their love matured and gradually impinged upon de Villiers’s innermost psyche. Then, suddenly, Jan Fontaine contracted jaundice at the hospital and died. His unexpected death forced de Villiers to confront an issue he had studiously avoided. He knew that he resented, even hated, Fontaine, but he never for a moment considered the easy solution of a hospital accident. That would be murder, not impersonal business, and would sully the pure and solid core of his love. Likewise he knew he could never propose marriage while he was still earning his living by killing.

He lived by the unwritten but rigid law of the contract killer. If he took on a job, he would see it through to the end. He would complete those contracts still in hand but he would take on no new work.

In the African winter of 1986, two months after the death of Jan Fontaine, de Villiers flew with Anne to Pietersburg and hired a Land Rover. Unhampered by time limitations, they wandered the Transvaal, camping among the quiet pools and mist-laden hills of Magoebaskloef, to the night calls of Samango monkeys. Then, high in the Woodbush Mountains, they backpacked through forests of kiepersol and cabbage trees, gazing up at giant ironwoods alive with birdsong.

Farther north they crossed the Soutpansberg range and the Limpopo River into Zimbabwe. De Villiers took local advice to find the most famous of the giant baobabs, over a thousand years old, that tower over the thorn and mopane trees of the savannah. Ignoring ant bites, he clambered about with his camera in search of weird angles.

The best of South Africa’s many wild game parks was undoubtedly the Kruger National in Eastern Transvaal, so they recrossed the Limpopo and entered the lush riverine forests to the south of Phalaborwa.

Along the Wolhuter Trail they spotted oribi, sable and white rhinos, and resting awhile in quiet shade beside a game pool, de Villiers asked Anne whether she would say yes if ever he asked her to marry him. She answered with a question.

“I know you cannot talk about your work. I have always known not to pester you with my curiosity. But, if we become as one, will you trust me enough to confide in me?”

De Villiers looked down at his hands and spoke slowly. “My life with you is a million miles from my business activities. They are incompatible and I have decided, now that you are free, to change my job. This will take a little while because there are things which I am bound to see through. When I leave you next month I shall deal with the outstanding business as quickly as possible.”

“And then?”

“Then I will settle in the Cape. I will find work with animal photography and wait for your answer.”

Somewhere north of the Malelane Gate to the park a wildebeest crashed out onto the red-dirt murrim track ahead of the Land Rover. De Villiers swerved and, by misfortune, one wheel struck a sharp rock. The vehicle careered into a boulder and de Villiers was knocked unconscious.

When he came to his senses he found that Anne was in pain. Her safety belt had saved her face but her legs had been driven backward and he suspected internal injuries. After giving her painkilling pills, he made for the Malelane Gate, thumbing a lift from a passing truck to the nearest telephone. An ambulance took them to Nelspruit Hospital but de Villiers was adamant that she must have only the best treatment and, against the doctors’ advice, flew with her from Nelspruit to Johannesburg, having caught the daily plane by the skin of their teeth.

That evening Anne was sweating, her pulse racing, and she was in shock. The doctor carefully lifted her legs one by one. As her right leg moved, she screamed. Her blood pressure was low. After blood tests and a cross-match she was given a Dextran drip and an X ray. Within minutes another doctor cheerfully announced to de Villiers that Anne had broken her pelvis: nothing that a simple operation would not fix, but the immediate problem, rendered critical by the delay before hospitalization, was internal loss of blood. Once the cross-match results were available, at least four pints would be replaced.

While de Villiers’s own cuts were being cleaned up more thoroughly than at Nelspruit, bottles of the correct blood group were removed from the hospital blood bank, warmed up and given to Anne via the drip.

The operation went smoothly and three months later Anne was well enough to ride again at La Pergole…