by Deon Meyer
On a straight section of the D676 before Villeréal he suddenly realised he was going too fast, close to 180 k.p.h., that it was dangerous on this road. And that what he was doing was familiar. He had experienced it before.
He stopped at the T-junction where the road sign indicated Envals 3.3. His heart beat rapidly. He took a deep breath, tried to regain control, calm. He got off, put the bike on the stand, removed the crash helmet. He felt anxiety, claustrophobia. He remembered what it had been like in the Sudan, ten years ago, when he had last had this feeling, this insight. He had ridden this motorbike from Johannesburg, through Africa. From sunrise to sunset. Day after day. His mind in another world. He talked to others only when it was necessary, to procure food, bed, fuel, repairs to a tyre, getting the motorbike welded. Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia. And in the north of Sudan, on a desert road between Khartoum and Merowe, at nearly 200 k.p.h., on a straight road stretching to the horizon, he had understood what he was trying to achieve. He wanted to get away from all his memories, the pain and trauma, just race away from them. He wanted to leave them all behind, the ghosts who pursued him. He stopped in the sweltering heat beside the road, and knew he would have to confront his demons at some time or other.
He tried. From Alexandria to Sicily to Marseille. Through Europe. Each day he faced a scrap of his history, and a piece of himself. Until he experienced some measure of peace, just enough to stop him running away.
It was back. This time he was running from what Mandla Masondo and Lonnie May had placed in front of him. Running from responsibility, from going back to who he had been and what he used to do.
In Cadouin, a small medieval village, he made his decision. He sat alone outside the street café, in the cool of Le Triskel’s veranda, drinking coffee and staring at the church and the monastery, established nearly a thousand years before. He looked at the village around him, the serenity, order, the lifestyle, the simplicity of existence, the égalité, the absence of poverty. That was all he had wished for his country. That dignity, that prosperity, this pride, the knowledge that all the blood that had been spilled through history, all the sacrifices, all these had made this possible, produced this, brought this into serene being. With the conviction that it was right and good.
He wanted to approach everything rationally. He tried to work through the emotions stirred up by Masondo’s letter and Lonnie’s death, systematically, little by little, rivulets of thought flowing together, like the Cata River. He was only partially successful: it remained in the pit of his mind, like lead.
He weighed up each thing against the other. His existence here. He knew his Bordeaux life was a refuge, an escape, a balm for all the old hurts. He knew this life wasn’t contributing to a community; it made no significant difference to the world, had no great meaning or purpose. But it was his life. It was the little bit of happiness he had, and surely the most he would ever have.
He would have to give it up. To assassinate another country’s head of state in France would make him the most hunted man in Europe. They would not rest until they had him. And they would find out who he was, sooner or later. If he survived, if he got away, he would remain a fugitive. To the very end.
He had to weigh that up against the likely impact of eliminating the president. A symbolic deed at best, showing that it was possible to fight back against corruption and betrayal. They’re a cancer, were Lonnie’s words. Cut it out here, it starts up somewhere else. A Hydra – you can never cut off all the snakes’ heads. They’re a machine with a thousand gears.
Could he believe what Lonnie had said? We’ll issue a press release saying he is the first. There will be more. Would there really be more? Was the group of forty-three ready for that? Did they have other plans?
He would have to trust them, his old comrades. Lonnie had given his life for this cause, for this strategy. Mandla was ready to put his name to a letter, a letter that could have been intercepted, that could have cost him his life.
His decision was not a sudden moment of clarity, an overwhelming wave of emotion. It was an intellectual decision, slow and reluctant, bearing full knowledge of the consequences.
He sat there, beside the square opposite the ancient church, and reached into his jacket for his cell phone. He called Madame Sandrine Lefèvre. She answered instantly, greeting him warmly, the first time in almost a month that they had spoken. She asked him how he was.
He said, ‘Well, thank you, Madame. May I come and see you?’
‘Tu nos quittes?’ Much disappointment, sure that, like his predecessors, he couldn’t persevere with Monsieur any longer.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to resign. I just want three weeks to deal with a personal matter.’
He knew it was only a half-truth. He would never see her again.
Chapter 41
‘I knew him, Lonnie,’ he’d protested in Au Bistrot, one of his many arguments against doing it. ‘I knew the president.’
‘In those days we all thought we knew him,’ Lonnie said. ‘But he was already scheming, I’m telling you. He was planning his coup d’état from way back. He’s a sly bastard.’
Daniel shook his head. ‘He was good to me. He . . . I was still a child . . .’
‘You?’ Lonnie grinned. ‘You were never a child. I remember you in Angola. You must have been about eighteen, but you were already a man. More of a man than most people twice your age.’
He ignored the flattery. ‘I was seventeen when I was smuggled through Swaziland. There was a safe house in Goba, Mozambique, where we slept . . .’
‘I remember. That aunty made such delicious food . . .’
‘One evening he came and sat next to me. He was travelling, I don’t know where to. He was in a hurry, he had a lot to do. But he sat with me at that kitchen table for almost an hour. He told me he was also scared the first time. Because you didn’t know what to expect, all that lay ahead of you. And you miss your family, when you’re that young. Your mother and father. He said he missed his mother so much. Then he asked me what my father did. I told him he was a missionary. And my father didn’t know I was joining the Struggle, though he must have heard about it from my uncle by now. My father was a good man and I felt very guilty. He deserved better. The president said my father would be very proud of me. And that I was a brave young man.’
‘He said that to everyone, Tiny.’
‘He missed his mother.’
‘So what?’
‘He told me my father would be proud, when I really needed to hear that. And now you want me to look that man in the eyes and kill him?’
Chapter 42
He went to fetch the rucksack from the motorbike’s pannier so that he could read Mandla Masondo’s postscript. The pistols were on top, wrapped in cheesecloth. He pushed them down to the bottom of the bag. Better to keep them for now.
He sat down, ordered more coffee and had to remember which district he was in before ordering the chocolatines. It was only in the south-west they called them chocolatines. The rest of France would ask for pains au chocolat.
Then he read Mandla’s postscript:
You were an agent for a long time, so you will know that it would be best if you destroyed this letter once you have read it. I only fear for my own safety because I have to look after Gugu, and the risk of sending it was high enough. But I have to take it.
If you decide that this is not your struggle, of course we will understand. You have been through so much. But we need to have your answer, for obvious reasons. These instructions were given to me. I write them exactly as I received them.
Please go to an internet café and create an email address at protonmail.com. It is a Swiss service that provides end-to-end encryption and it is extremely secure. Do not use your own phone or computer or your own internet connection. When you have the Proton email address, log on to Gumtree.co.za. It is a website where people can post advertisements for anything. Place a free advertisement in the Healer Services section, und
er the name of ‘Doctor Inhlanhla, Traditional Healer and Spell Caster’ and make your region Pretoria/Tshwane. Only add your new Proton address. If you decide not to join the struggle, that is all you do.
We hope with all our hearts that you will accept this one last assignment. If you do, please add the words ‘Love potions’ to the heading of the advertisement. We will then respond with a message that starts ‘Love potions are never enough’. The message will contain a way to contact us.
Please make sure that you are not followed to the internet café. If you know how, activate the ‘private’ setting on the internet browser when you log on to Proton, and delete your browser history before you log off from the computer.
Good luck!
He smiled wryly at ‘Dr Inhlanhla’, because it meant ‘Dr Happiness’ in Zulu. It was a good name for a traditional healer. He read the instructions once more, memorising the contents, then burned the letter.
Afterwards he paid for his coffee with money from the rucksack, climbed onto his motorbike, headed for Sarlat-la-Canéda. That was the nearest large town, known for its many British residents. He would find internet cafés there.
He rode the winding, narrow roads of the Périgord Noir, feeling free, right into Sarlat. At twenty to three he stopped at the Resto Cybercafé on the avenue Thiers. He paid for a password, picked a computer right at the back, and followed the letter’s instructions.
He created an email address, [email protected], and posted the advertisement on Gumtree. He added the words ‘Love potions’. He waited forty minutes to see if there was any response.
No email arrived.
He rode back to Bordeaux slowly, taking three hours.
Daniel didn’t want to use an internet café near his flat. He knew there was one near the main railway station, the Gare Saint-Jean. He went in to check if there was any mail. When he saw the message, his heart leaped. He leaned forward to obscure the screen, even though no one was looking in his direction.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Healer Services
To: [email protected]
Love potions are never enough.
Welcome on board!
Le Traiteur Marocain, Marché des Enfants Rouges, Paris. Monday.12.00.
That was all. Just those few sentences.
He read it again, then deleted the message.
Monday afternoon in Paris. The day after tomorrow.
The easiest and quickest way to reach the capital city was with the new bullet-train service to the Gare Montparnasse, two hours’ travel from Bordeaux. There ought to be enough trains tomorrow. He would take one in the late afternoon, and spend the night in Paris in a hotel somewhere. He googled the Marché des Enfants Rouges. He could see that it was the city’s oldest covered market, named after the red-uniformed orphans who used to live next door. Up in Le Marais, on the rue de Bretagne. Le Traiteur Marocain was a Moroccan restaurant in the market.
He deleted the history from the web browser before he left.
The shortest route to his garage was past the now-shut Capucins market. In the rue des Douves he saw Mamadou Ali standing with a small group of friends. He looked up when he heard the motorbike, waved his arms wildly to attract Daniel’s attention.
He stopped, and opened the crash-helmet visor.
‘I’ve been waiting here for you, Daniel. Are you in trouble?’ asked Ali, his voice muted, eyes scanning the streets.
‘Why?’
‘There are men . . . They’re asking everywhere if anyone knows a black man, big and tall, one point nine metres or more, who lives or works around here.’
‘What sort of men?’
‘White men. There were two. Looked like les flics.’ He used the street lingo for police. ‘But they’re not. They talk French with an accent. One is a big block of a man with an ear that’s seen better days. And the other has a sore arm . . .’
‘How do you know his arm is sore?’
‘He has a big bandage,’ said Ali and pointed at his right arm. ‘The thing is, Sansan Adjoumani, that big guy from Ivory Coast who works at the bicycle shop on the rue Magendie . . .’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘Well, that crétin told them it could be you. He was scared they would mess with him, and he doesn’t have papers. And Sansan said he thinks you live on the place Camille Pelletan. Are you in trouble? Do you need help?’
‘Thank you, Ali. You know me. I avoid trouble like the plague.’
‘D’accord. If they ask you, just say you know nothing. We have to stand together. They look like trouble.’
Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t know any other big black guys around here. Did they say why they were looking for him?’
‘Some stupid story about a lot of money he owes them. You could smell the merde a mile away. Anyway, I thought I’d tell you. You’re the biggest black guy I know.’
‘Thanks, Ali.’
He said goodbye, drove on. On his guard now, hyper-aware of every person on the street.
He drove past his garage first, turned at Victoire, doubled back. He didn’t see anyone. He stopped in front of the garage door, pulled off his gloves, took the rucksack out of the pannier. He looked up and down the rue Permentade, pushed his hand into the rucksack, struggled to get a pistol out of the cheesecloth. He got hold of the butt of one, pressed the safety off, still holding it in the rucksack, opened the garage door and went inside.
He took off his helmet, pulled the pistol out of the bag, holding it behind his back as he quickly checked, left and right, out of the garage doors. The street was Saturday-afternoon silent.
He tucked the pistol into his belt at the back of his biking trousers, darted out quickly, to push the motorbike inside. Closed the door again, then stood, trying to take stock.
What did they know? They had followed Lonnie May when he was heading in the direction of his flat. They would have learned that the Saint Michel neighbourhood had a high percentage of Africans. They knew he was a black man, as they had seen his hands and a part of his face, on the night he had put them out of action. They knew he was big. Hence that description when they came asking questions. Few people knew where he lived, very few knew where he worked. Sansan would not know.
He kept the biker jacket on to hide the pistol in his belt. He locked the rucksack into the pannier of the motorbike, locked the garage, walked up the rue Marengo, keeping his eyes peeled, on the roofs of the three-storey houses, the windows, doors, street corners.
A scooter approached him from the front. He put his hand on the pistol butt. It went past, just a student in shorts.
There was no one in place Camille Pelletan. He unlocked the front door, jogged up the stairs.
His flat door was open a crack, splinters from a crowbar just beside the lock.
He took out the pistol and went in.
Chapter 43
It was chaos inside. The sofa cushions were ripped open, one chair lay upside down. His tablet was on the floor, screen cracked.
Someone had been through his place, violently.
He stood dead still, listening.
Wackett sat on the windowsill, a bundle of self-pity, and shot Daniel a dirty look, as if this was all his fault.
He could sense the flat was empty, that they had gone, but he kept the pistol ready, feeling the indignation, the rage, because they’d come into his space, his house and his privacy, and destroyed his serenity completely.
To the kitchen. Sugar, flour and oatmeal poured out over the kitchen table, the empty plastic containers and tinned food tossed all over, along with cleaning material and cloths. His fridge door standing open.
His bedroom was a mess, clothes, bedding strewn around. He went straight to where his Daniel Darret proofs of identity were stored, in the space behind the skirting board beside his bed. The piece of wood he had so carefully cut out was undisturbed. He wiggled it loose. The documents were still there, the birth certificate he’d bought from the real Daniel Darret, a m
an he had met seven years ago at a hairdresser’s in the Château d’Eau district of Paris. The real Darret had urgently needed money to return to the Ivory Coast for unexplained personal reasons. Thobela Mpayipheli had money – a farm’s worth – and an urgent need to become someone else.
The certificate was safe in the niche, along with his passport. He carried his carte nationale d’identité in his wallet, along with his driver’s licence. He had obtained the ID card and passport using the purchased birth certificate. His own photo was on it, his fingerprints on record. Official proof of a new life.
He left the documents there, put the block back carefully.
He went to the front door. He would have to repair it, and reinforce his first line of defence. He put the pistol on the kitchen table, took off the jacket, and fetched tools from the cardboard box under the kitchen sink, where it was also overturned and scattered.
He worked on the door – he would only be able to restore it partially. He would have to fit a big bolt, but where could he buy something like that at this time on a Saturday? He wondered what they were looking for. Some form of identity, a photo? Proof that Lonnie had been there, or that Daniel was their attacker? Documentation of a murder conspiracy?
There was nothing here. But he had a niggling doubt, something at the edge of consciousness, a nagging idea. A proof, a clue that eluded him now.
He thought while he worked. The tablet had a South African news app on it, if they had checked. A vague superficial pointer, if they had seen it. But he never used email or social media, so there was no personal content they could use to identify him. He stored his payslips at work. There was nothing in the flat they could connect to him, so why couldn’t he shake off this vague worry? The tablecloth he had wrapped around his head was at the shop; the rucksack and pistols had been with him on the motorbike.
His shirt. The bloodied shirt was in the washing basket.
