The Devil's breath

4

Adrenaline had scoured Max’s body over the past twenty-four hours, putting him in an almost constant state of physical alertness as his mind responded to the “fight or flight” hormones banging through his system. Despite the fatigue, he had slept badly. Unfolding thoughts of his father and the responsibility Max now carried excited and scared him.

Farentino had painted only a fairly broad picture of what his father did, but nevertheless it explained where his father’s strength and courage came from. How did a graduate scientist end up fighting pirates and ambushing smugglers of endangered species? Or hacking his way through impenetrable jungles to find the source of a rare plant that could cure desperately ill people without letting the huge, profit-making drug companies exploit it?

Tom Gordon’s own sense of adventure helped, but the government had trained him. He wasn’t a spy, but his job came close to it-and in some ways what he did may have been more risky. He took on dangerous people who flouted international law. He had been field-trained by the best and, given the incident with the pirates off the coast of Africa and the way his dad had dealt with them, Max had an idea Special Forces might have been involved in that training. His father had a privileged “go anywhere” freedom, checking on rogue countries to see whether they were breaking or contravening international law. He met Max’s mother in South America when she was researching the damage caused to the environment by illegal logging in the rain forests. Within a couple of years they realized that governments around the world were often turning a blind eye to major illegal scientific and ecological issues. Trade agreements and mutual interests corrupted everyone.

His parents’ integrity made them not only important contacts but also many enemies. They challenged big business, brought executives to trial and forced many illegal companies that endangered the environment to close. Mention the names Tom and Helen Gordon to anyone in science and ecology, and the brave, pioneering troubleshooters were quietly acknowledged as being fearless. Anyone threatening the well-being of the earth with dangerous activities was their target. But eventually Tom and Helen resigned from government service because politics interfered with their work. They joined a small but dedicated group of people, privately funded, who moved across international borders, helping those who wanted to make a positive contribution while exposing and bringing to court those whose greed caused misery.

???

Max quickly made his way through Johannesburg International Airport. He moved swiftly down the concourse, past planes on the apron, their nose cones almost pressing against the terminal building-big, fat geese masquerading as peacocks, their brightly painted tail fins flared out behind them.

The first thing he had to do was contact Sayid and warn him about Mr. Peterson. Flipping open his cell phone, he waited as it connected to the local server and then he began texting. Thinking of Sayid brought the time frame into focus. Was it only yesterday he had left his school and taken the train to London and put this whole plan into action?

“OK,” Sayid had told him, “you’d better take this.” His friend had handed Max his new phone. “I’ve swapped the SIM card, it’s clean. I don’t know where you’re going to end up, but if you really think there’s someone out to kill you and your dad, odds are they’ll have a trace on your phone.”

Sayid explained that if Max texted him, the program he had created would scramble the message. Text was quicker and safer than voice. Sayid would then unscramble the message at his end, once the signal had been bounced in and out of European servers. With any luck the bad guys wouldn’t twig that Sayid was his contact; at least not for a while. The biggest problem would be if Max was out of range of any signal. The best Sayid could offer then was for Max to use a landline, take a chance with uncoded speech, and Sayid would rely on his computer to disguise the download.

Max checked the text. Peterson followed me 2 airprt. Also thnk he searched my rm. Dont trst him. Rpt: Dont trst Ptrson.

Twenty minutes before Sayid received Max’s encrypted text message, he was pounding, tired and wet from a strenuous cross-country run, up the broad granite staircase to his room. The boys always ran as hard as they could across Dartmoor’s demanding terrain because they had the time to themselves from when they crossed the finish line until the evening meal was served in the oak-timbered hall.

His trainers squelched from the bog sludge, so he leaned against the wall and pulled them off, preferring the sensation of the cold stone beneath his feet. In that moment of silence he heard someone talking, and sounding quite exasperated. The voice was coming from Mr. Peterson’s room. As he got nearer to the closed door he could clearly hear Peterson’s voice; it was obviously a telephone conversation. Sayid made sure no one else was in sight and pressed closer to the old door.

“… I told you he never got to Toronto…. I don’t know how he managed it! … and I don’t want to keep going over it … no … no, the boy at the airport must have been a friend, he’s not a pupil here…. None of that matters. We’ve lost him and I’m really worried about it now….”

Then a few muffled words were said that Sayid could not hear. Peterson had probably turned away from the door, perhaps he was pacing back and forth across the room, as his voice was unclear at times. Then Sayid picked it up again.

“… well, obviously South Africa … and if he knows or finds out what his father discovered … yes … yes … We must do what we can…. I feel responsible. Do we have any people over there? Anyone we can use? Good … put them on alert until I can find out more….”

Sayid dropped a shoe. The noise it made was not particularly loud but it was enough for Peterson to stop talking. Sayid ran as fast he could on tiptoe along the corridor to his room, and as Peterson yanked open the door he was already around a corner, out of sight. Peterson looked up and down the corridor and saw no one, but he could not fail to notice the wet footprints and the globule of black mud on the floor. The footprints went straight towards Sayid Khalif’s room.

Peterson weighed up the risks. Had the boy heard anything? He stepped back into his room. If he confronted Sayid now, it might trigger the boy’s suspicions that Max was heading into serious trouble.

Max’s connecting flight to Namibia landed a couple of hours later. Windhoek’s airport had only a small building for its terminal, but South African Cliff Swallows nested there, and White-rumped Swifts swooped across the building’s panoramic windows giving a view of the harsh scrubland that lay beyond the runway. A dozen or more kilometers away, a malevolent-looking black cloud rolled across the horizon like a giant rain-filled tumbleweed; a sudden storm, prodded on by forked lightning, dumping its much-needed rainwater.

The rolling weather front reminded Max of home.

Dartmoor was a remote and sometimes dangerous place, but this huge expanse of wilderness could swallow him up and no one would know.

Max suddenly felt very alone and, if he was honest, scared. The flight to Canada would have landed a few hours before he reached South Africa. If the people following him had watched the airport in Toronto and had seen his look-alike arrive, would that have been enough to fool them? If it hadn’t, maybe they had figured out where he was heading. He was about to check the cell to see if Sayid had sent any messages, when his eyes caught the fleeting blur of a swift as it swooped to catch a flying insect.

The bird probably saved his life.

As he turned to watch it, he saw two men heading towards him who looked as though they wrestled crocodiles for a living. One had long hair and wore a bush shirt and khaki shorts; his squashed-nosed face sported a scrub beard. A scar across his cheek separated the whiskers-a white slash against his sun-baked skin that the beard failed to conceal. The other was pure Hollywood. Tall and broad, his chest like two concrete paving slabs that his T-shirt could barely restrain. His close-cropped hair and pilot’s dark glasses could have got him work for any top fashion magazine. Instead, he and his partner, ex-South African policemen, were hired killers.

Max didn’t have to think twice about their intentions. He ran for the nearest door and they followed, dodging the few remaining passengers. Max pushed through into a STAFF ONLY area, a long corridor with wire cages to one side and a solid concrete-block wall on the other. He heard the thump of the door as the men came after him. He risked a glance over his shoulder-the men were too big to run side by side along the narrow passage, so one of them ducked off to his right and clattered onto a metal spiral staircase that cork-screwed down through the cages which, Max realized, were for storing luggage waiting to be loaded on to aircraft.

Scarface was almost on him. Max felt him snatch at his neck and the man swore, missing him, as Max stretched out an extra pace. But there was nowhere to go, and within a couple of seconds Scarface would grip him with those huge hands. Then Max saw the downwards-twisting rollers used by cargo handlers to slide heavy cases to the loading area below. Max dived, his backpack now on his chest like a belly board. The rollers rattled as he hurtled downwards. The man behind him shouted something in a foreign language and kicked the wire-caged wall in frustration. He would have to retrace his steps to the stairs. Max hit the curved stainless-steel barrier at the bottom of the chute. It flipped him over. He rolled, hugged his bag to his chest, vaulted over the low barrier and ran straight into Mr. Hollywood, who wrapped his muscled arms around him. “Got him!” he yelled; his expensive capped white teeth smiled as they chomped down again and again on a piece of well-chewed gum.

He was too confident. Max threw his head back, giving himself just enough leverage, then slammed his heel down, as hard as he could, on the man’s ankle. It was one of the most painful self-defense tricks he had learned. Mr. Hollywood shouted out in pain and dropped his chin in disbelief as Max whipped his head back up, connecting with the perfect jawline. He heard the teeth shatter and a mumbled, agonizing choking sound. Max knew the man had probably bitten his tongue half through. The shock and pain weren’t enough to stop him though, and he lurched at Max, who rammed a shoulder with all his strength beneath the gasping man’s rib cage, as if he were tackling a rugby opponent. It rocked Mr. Hollywood back on his heels, the momentum forcing his legs against an overweight suitcase; he lost his balance and tumbled helplessly backwards towards the stainless-steel rim of the chute that moments earlier had flipped Max over. It sliced into the base of the man’s skull. Blood oozed around his T-shirt and his eyes rolled back into his head. Air bubbled through what was left of his smashed mouth. He wasn’t very handsome anymore.

Max pulled his backpack over his shoulders and ran down through the loading bays. Where was everyone? This must be a cargo and luggage holding area, so no one would be here unless they were loading. He had been lucky so far, he knew that. Where was Scarface? He heard an engine grunt behind him, and as he turned a forklift truck accelerated straight at him. Scarface had the pedal to the floor, diesel fumes spewed out and the two metal loading shafts were rising to chest level as Scarface operated the hydraulic lever. He meant to skewer Max like a kebab. Max spun around and ran-but there was nowhere to go. He was in an alleyway of cargo. Crates and boxes were stacked high on each side and pallets supported all kinds of material. Industrial generators were housed next to domestic refrigerators; construction pipes and electric cabling shared a stack with crated household goods. Max ran as hard as he could, but there were only forty meters left and then Scarface would crush him against the end-of-alley shelving.

Max looked around desperately. Was there a chance he could climb up and pull something heavy down onto Scarface? That wouldn’t work; the forklift had a protective cage over the driver. Then he realized what he had to do-his only chance. He turned and faced the beast of a machine, now only a few meters away. He couldn’t dodge to one side, Scarface would twitch the wheel and crush him against the metal shelving. He stood his ground, like a matador waiting for the charging bull. Scarface was momentarily perplexed, but didn’t care. The two giant blades of the forklift’s arms were now at chest height. Max made a grab for them, barely hanging on as the well-worn metal slipped under his grip. If he couldn’t climb up, he would go under the wheels. Like a gymnast on parallel bars, he swung his lower body and hooked his leg over one of the shafts.

Max straddled the blade and hung on, his body almost within touching distance of Scarface. He sat as square as he could, staring down Scarface, who had not taken his eyes off him. The beard parted-a grin of victory. He would smash Max into the end shelving. Max glared at him. He was drawing on his last strength and energy, and he had to keep this sociopath’s attention focused. Max swore and shouted, and then spat as much spittle as he could manage out of his dry mouth. Scarface stopped smiling. The urge to kill Max was foremost in his mind, and impact was imminent.

Then, suddenly, Max swung under the metal shaft, clinging on with his arms and legs. In that moment Scarface realized that Max’s body had been blocking his view. He threw an arm up in self-defense, but it was too late. The forklift slammed into the end shelving. A hundred lengths of copper tubing that had been stacked there now reacted to the impact and rocketed forward above Max’s arms and legs and into the unprotected Scarface. A dozen lengths of pipe, as lethal as a hail of arrows, slammed into him. Max was shunted off the forklift and into the shelving below the remainder of the copper tubes, which spilled from the shelf and clattered over him.

Bruised and winded, he fought free and climbed from under the pier of metal. Scarface was either unconscious or dead. Copper spears punctured his arms and chest, pinning him to his seat. The forklift’s motor had stalled.

It was suddenly very quiet.

Max needed a drink.

Back in the terminal building, Max had his face over the water fountain, swallowing as much as the feeble spurt would allow. A young woman, dressed in bush fatigues, tanned and looking as though she lived and breathed Africa, had come up behind him. He thought she must have been about seventeen. Her bright smile and blue eyes looked even more stunning because of her short, sun-bleached hair. She was lithe but strong-looking, like an athlete, and the shorts that reached halfway down her thighs were evidently worn for practicality rather than fashion. A couple of grease marks, ingrained dust and dirt suggested that she used them as a hand-wipe whenever necessary. Max was caught unawares, and his heart was pounding, not because she had startled him, but because of the way she looked.

“Are you Max?” she asked.

“Yes,” he finally managed to answer, wiping a dribble of water from his chin.

“Sorry I’m late. Had a problem with a fuel line. Come on then.”

She turned away.

“Hang on a minute,” he called after her. He wasn’t going to be treated like a puppy-and after the last twenty minutes he was not going to follow anyone anywhere, no matter how appealing they looked. She stopped and waited. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, realizing this might be a setup.

She gazed at him. “I’m Kallie van Reenen,” she answered. “He said you’d be cautious. That’s good out here-it might keep you alive.” She raised an eyebrow. Was that enough information?

“Who said?”

“Mr. Farentino.”

Max nodded and fell into step with her. And wished she weren’t so attractive.

When they left the terminal she took him to the other end of the airport apron, where private aircraft were parked. Safari companies often flew their clients from here, and local farmers used it as their nearest parking area for the city. Farentino had warned her that Max was on his way, and as it was her father to whom the Bushman had delivered Tom Gordon’s animal-wrapped field notes, she was the starting point for Max’s journey.

The outside temperature was a shock. Sweat gathered around the waistband of his cargo pants and soaked a long stain down the back of his T-shirt. Max knew he would acclimatize quickly, as he had done before on trips with his father; but his body was also coping with the stress he had been through. He edged into the shade of a hangar and watched silently as Kallie did her preflight inspection on an old single-engine plane that looked to be well past its sell-by date. But he remembered his father telling him about these old bush-bashers. They were as solid as they come, and every aircraft had to have a vigorous ongoing maintenance and airworthiness certificate, so he took some comfort in that.

Kallie checked the propeller, making sure there was no damage to it; then the flaps; she ran a loving hand along the struts and then, finally, clambered on board. Max was edgy, expecting police cars to come screaming up any minute. But nothing happened.

He checked the phone. The message from Sayid on the blue screen was brief:

Peterson nos where u r.

Max grimaced. Thanks, Sayid, but recent events have already confirmed this.

“OK!” Kallie shouted. “Let’s go!”

Climbing into the cockpit was another step away from whoever else Peterson might have sent after him. He gratefully strapped on the safety harness. Kallie flicked control levers with practiced ease, clicked the radio on, contacted the tower and was given clearance to taxi. Max had a flight simulator on his computer at Dartmoor High, but this old plane’s instrument panel looked completely different from the F16s he tried to maneuver at Mach 2 on his computer screen. No target screen, no rate-of-climb dial, no radar. With a bit of thought he could identify the basic instruments as her fingers moved to the master and alternator switches, which turned on all the electrics for the plane. Stuck to the instrument panel was a somewhat tattered, postcard-sized, laminated board. The laminate was bubbled in places, and the heat had frayed the edges into brown crackling. Half a dozen words were typed on it: Rather Too Many Pilots Forget How It Goes.

“What’s this?” he asked, as she eased out the throttle lever, slowing the plane so that it was barely moving, waiting to take up position for takeoff.

“Oh, my dad. He worries. He taught me to fly. But you know what dads are like. Don’t want you to make mistakes if they can help it.” She hesitated, noticing the shadow that flickered across Max’s eyes. “Sorry, that was thoughtless of me. Under the circumstances.”

He shook his head. “It’s OK. Honest. My dad’s the same.”

She smiled. “It’s a reminder. A whatchamacallit. When the words trigger things …”

“A mnemonic.”

“That’s it.” She pointed at the capital letter for every word, each a stab at a pilot’s memory. “R-Radios on. Rudder check movement; T-Trim elevator to takeoff position, throttle tension and set for start; M-Mixture rich, magnetos on; P-Pitot heat-that’s in case there are icy conditions, not much chance of that today; F-Fuel select for tanks, flaps set for takeoff; H-Harness secure, hatches closed; I–Instruments, check temperatures; G-Gyros set to the compass heading, gear selected down and three green lights.”

Max knew he would have trouble remembering the reminder, let alone what it stood for. Before he could think of anything sensible to say, Kallie’s voice changed to a monotone, concentrated answer as she responded to the instructions from the air traffic controller’s voice in her headphones. The old Cessna 185 rattled like a supermarket cart full of empty tin cans. Kallie eased in the throttle, gave Max a reassuring smile-which did little to help his nerves-and then the plane lurched forward, centered on the runway’s white strip. Suddenly they were rumbling towards the horizon. Max watched the airspeed indicator climb from 60 to 65 miles per hour-the plane was ancient enough for its dial not to show aeronautical knots. The rev-counter touched 2550 revs and Kallie pulled the plane up into the sky, straight at the high hills that were far too close to the end of the runway for Max’s liking. The long, gradual climb took forever, and the plane rocked a little. She smiled at him. “This kind of heat can make things tricky in the air.”

She seemed confident enough that they were going to clear those fast-approaching hills.

“Would you keep your eyes on the road,” he muttered.

After half an hour he could barely hear himself think. The plane’s engine was deafening, and there was only one pair of headphones, which were clamped over her ears. They were cruising at 130 miles per hour, the vast expanse of the country below them etched with the occasional never-ending line of a road. Max tried to take an interest in the mountains to the east, their slopes furthest from the westering sun now cloaked in shadows and dust haze. But he was feeling rotten.

“Not long!” she shouted. “Only a couple of hours!”

He was uncomfortable. His backside ached. The old seats were like the old-fashioned tubular chairs they used to have in the school’s assembly hall, and he could not see above the instrument panel. How could you land when you couldn’t see the ground?

The plane wavered gently, its nose and blurring propeller pointing slightly above the horizon, as it seemed to balance precariously. The altimeter was marked in feet, and the needle nudged marginally past the 2 mark. Two thousand and a bit feet. Then the plane dropped into some sort of hole in the sky. The engine surged, Max’s stomach almost came up into his throat. “Turbulence!” she yelled again. “Happens all the time!”

He felt grubby from not having showered since he left Dartmoor; the long-haul flight’s food sat somewhere in his stomach like a ball of clay, and the noise and heat from the engine were scrambling his brains. And the attack at the airport had left him decidedly shaky. Airsickness started to coil around his throat like a clammy hand.

She glanced at him. “You going to puke?”

Embarrassed beyond belief, he nodded.

“Stick your head out the window!”

He pushed out the Perspex side window the fifteen centimeters its hinge allowed, and thrust his head out into the cold slipstream that buffeted his face. And then he vomited. The airline’s prepacked dinner disappeared beyond the tail-plane, free from the confines of his stomach. He wished he could be free of this plane. But it was a long way down-as the dinner showed him.

He decided to keep his head outside the cockpit. With any luck he might freeze to death. That would save him the embarrassment of facing Kallie again.

What a way to make a first impression.

Brandt’s Kraal Wilderness Farm was a jewel in the scorched landscape. A small, underground spring-fed water hole, about a quarter the size of a football pitch, and surrounded by palm and willow trees which created a cool haven. The ramshackle house was a huge, original Victorian bungalow with a deep veranda running all the way round it. Tired white paint covered the decorative finials running along the veranda’s lintel. Rust, time and the desert had taken their toll on everything he could see.

Kallie swooped the plane once across the farm, fifty meters above the battered galvanized roof, and then sideslipped expertly and landed close to the house. Max was thankful to get his feet back on terra firma. The heat sucked his energy from him. A couple of cross-bred dogs eased out from the dark beneath the house, which he could now see was built on low brick piers, and their deep-throated growls warned Max.

She soothed them. “Easy, boys. Come on.” They went happily to her, tails wagging lazily. Now confident that Max was no threat, the dogs sniffed his hand as he looked around him. The water obviously provided a vegetable garden, and drinking for livestock. These people were as self-sufficient as they could be. And where there’s water there’s wildlife, and that in turn brought hunters. A raptor circled lazily, high above the water. Ominous. Vulture-like.

“It’s an African Hawk Eagle,” Kallie told him as he shielded his eyes. “Plenty of birds here for it, and some small game as well. I hate to see the songbirds get taken but … well, that’s how it is. Getting killed out here is a daily occurrence. For animals, at least.”

“Are your parents here?” he asked, expecting the formality of introductions and preparing for long explanations as to how he was feeling, why he was there, and how hopeless his task might be.

“Divorced. Dad’s got a newer plane than the old Cessna. He’s taken clients up west and north. Lot of birders come out here. It pays OK.”

“So you stay here alone?”

“I do the bookings, keep the place going. Got a few helpers for the heavy stuff; and there’s a town about an hour away. It’s pretty convenient,” she said.

“I thought this was a wildlife farm. I don’t see any,” Max said as they reached the shade of the veranda.

“Used to be. It went bust thirty years ago. We kept the name.”

“And where’s Mr. Brandt?”

“He died a hundred years ago. This used to be a watering hole for cattle drovers, and Brandt had this place then. We kept that name, too. There didn’t seem much point in changing it. People round here don’t like change.”

People? Max could scarcely believe anyone lived within a thousand kilometers of this place.

It was a blessed relief to lie in the cool water that slopped nearly over the edge of the old cast-iron bath. The discolored water came from the same source as the watering hole, the underground spring, but it was tepid, not icy as it would have been at home.

Kallie knocked on the bathroom door. “When you’re ready!”

A simple bed, covered with a mosquito net, stood in the middle of what was a room obviously belonging to a sportsman. Pictures and trophies were everywhere: swimming, rugby, shooting, hockey, football. It was Kallie’s brother’s room.

“Johan’s away at boarding school. Look, you’re going to need better clothes than what you’ve got. You’re about the same size, so I’ve dug out some of his stuff.” Lightweight khaki shirts and shorts were on the bed, well worn but still serviceable.

“How old is Johan?”

“Seventeen, same as me. And you?”

“Sixteen, nearly seventeen,” he lied. He was big enough, he decided, to get away with it, and he wanted to impress her. She looked at him and turned away.

“We need to eat-and talk. Get dressed.”

She had this casual way of telling him what to do. He didn’t like it, but he figured that people who lived out here didn’t have much chance to hone their conversational or social skills. He dropped the towel from around his waist and climbed into her brother’s clothes.

By the time he sat on the veranda, which she called a stoep-an Afrikaans word-the sun was setting, light bleeding gently away, giving up the land to cooling shadows. Night comes quickly to those latitudes, and by the time food was brought to the table the sky was black. Beyond the water and trees, low on the horizon, the yellow full moon edged upwards. It was a wonder of such uninhabited places that Max had experienced before. Crystal-clear nights, free from the light-pollution of city and town, gave the stars a water-like clarity-so many, the sky glistened with them. And Max never ceased to wonder that this moon, so close that it seemed he could step to the edge of the world and touch it, had known the footsteps of mankind.

One of the farm workers lit a paraffin lamp and the night bugs and moths hovered, attracted by the deadly flame.

Max ate his first decent meal in a couple of days. It was basic meat and vegetables and had been cooked by a servant, a woman with a slight pallor to her skin, an almost apricot color, and what looked like Mongolian features: high cheekbones and narrowed eyes. While Max chewed, Kallie explained. The woman was a descendant of the Bushmen, nomadic hunter-gatherers whose way of life was virtually extinct. Two hundred years ago, colonists and black tribesmen alike hunted them like animals and, although the Bushmen never owned land-a concept alien to them-in more recent times the areas in which they hunted had been taken by the government and they themselves herded into a reserve. It sounded similar to the story Max had heard about the Native Americans.

“Over the years my father did what he could for the Bushmen,” Kallie told him. “They’re very special, not many people understand them, and their language is extremely difficult to learn. It’s all about clicking the tongue against your teeth and the roof of your mouth … different sounds, different emphasis. Sorry, that doesn’t explain it very well, does it?” She turned and spoke gently to the old woman who had served them food. Max thought they were sweet-sounding, rhythmic words, and he could hear the different click sounds. The woman nodded and moved away, her eyes averted.

Kallie saw his interest.

“Don’t stare at her, Max. Staring is rude in Bushman culture.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know much about the indigenous people here.”

She was silent for a moment. “Y’know, the Bushmen are trapped-their souls are in a kind of hell for them. They are God’s creatures, as close to the red dirt as the animals that wander over it. Now we tell them they have to live in settlements, or reserves, but when the rains come and the lightning chases the clouds, then they have to go walkabout. Their spirit is out there in the desert. You put one of these people in prison, he dies, and if they stay out here, many die of hunger and thirst. Climate change, poaching, indifferent rainfall and the twenty-first century-it’s all stacked against them.”

She gazed at him, searching his face, and he felt the blood ease into his cheeks as he blushed, like the darkening sky. He looked away. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her-about herself-but that too was probably ill-mannered.

“Why are you here?” Kallie asked.

“What do you mean? Because of my dad. Why else?”

“I don’t know.” She looked out across the dry grassland. “This country kills a lot of people, Max. Maybe you should expect the worst.”

“I like to take a more positive outlook on things. I think my dad’s alive.”

“Fair enough. Y’know, it was because my father had always done what he could for the Bushmen that one of them brought those field notes here. He left his family out there to do that. My father was the only white man they could trust. That’s the only connection we have with whatever has happened.”

“And I appreciate your help in bringing me here.”

She looked away, and after a moment he followed her gaze. The old woman had taken a lantern and gone into the willow trees by the water, where she beckoned someone there to join her. A Bushman boy of about thirteen stepped out. He was slightly built, with an open, appealing face which smiled easily. He dipped his head in respect for the old woman. The only clothing he wore was a loincloth, embroidered with simple red and blue stitching. He carried a quiver of pencil-thin arrows and a short hunting bow over his shoulder, and in his hand a spear. He nodded as the old woman spoke to him, and then he looked up to where Max and Kallie were sitting.

“He was the one who brought your father’s notes, four weeks ago. Long before Mr. Farentino contacted us. He’s been here ever since.”

“Here?” Max asked. “Does he work here now?”

The boy stood, unmoving, silhouetted against the enormous moon. Max watched as its soft glow embraced the boy and encircled him protectively.

“No. You don’t understand,” she said. “He’s been waiting for you. He says it was written you would come. You’re some kind of ancient prophecy.”