The Last Hunt

by Deon Meyer

He felt the tension, how his heart pounded. He pulled another canvas bag out. It was the camping stool. He opened it, slid out the folded chair, and leaned it against the Peugeot.

  ‘And that?’

  It was the box with cooking and eating utensils. He lifted it onto the ground, opened the flaps, began unpacking.

  ‘Never mind. You can put it back, thank you, sir.’

  He put the box away with a huge sense of relief and began rolling up the sleeping bag.

  ‘No, sir, you can do that at home. You’re holding us up.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and shoved everything hastily back.

  ‘Can I close it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, sir, you may go.’

  He said thank you, said goodbye, got back in, started the engine and drove away. Only after a kilometre did he look back, reassured to see no military vehicles following. He sighed deep and long. He looked at his hands. No tremors.

  Not bad for a middle-aged spy. He had done well.

  He had to fill up with fuel, buy a Coke for the sugar and sudden thirst, take a breather, and regroup. He stopped at the Total Access just east of Lagny-sur-Marne midtown.

  That was where he discovered the microchip.

  It was sheer providence, he thought later, that it had happened there. While he was getting out, Fate intervened. Lady Luck smiled for the second time in half an hour.

  He opened the door, swung his legs out, and it was in that movement that the bottom hem of his jeans scratched his ankle. He realised it wasn’t the first time that day he’d felt an irritation against his skin. It was just rougher and sharper now. He reached down the leg of his jeans expecting to find a label or staple he’d overlooked when he’d hastily dumped all his things into his case in Arcachon. His fingers felt . . . and found it, the foreign object, a flat block, a small flat tab. He fiddled with it, couldn’t see down there, and eventually he turned the hem up.

  It was stuck there, matt black, just two centimetres long. He pulled it off, saw the little barbs that made it cling to the material, the gold of four electronic contact points. In that moment he knew how it had got there.

  The potato farmer. Sickle. The Pancake House toilet, where he’d been searched for recording devices, when every piece of clothing had been thoroughly felt. While Daniel had had his back turned in embarrassment over his nakedness. Laurel and Hardy. Perhaps they were not quite as stupid and expendable as he’d thought. Now he knew why they hadn’t bothered following him. He had a strong suspicion that this little bit of technology was a GPS tracker.

  He activated his cell phone, googled ‘small GPS tracking device’. He quickly found something that looked a lot like the chip in his hands – a CATS-I, the smallest of its kind. The combination of GPS, RF and GSM technologies in the one device is designed to provide the best possible chance of recovering your ‘tracked’ asset, regardless of its current location, according to the website. The inclusion of an RF beacon allows for accurate locating when hidden inside buildings, and a new GSM location technology provides almost GPS-like accuracy in mapped areas. The GSM technology relies on a GSM sim chip instead of a GSM sim card . . .

  This one looked different, slightly more homemade and rough, but it was definitely the same thing.

  They knew exactly where he’d been. And where he was now.

  Chapter 70

  Daniel’s first reaction was to get rid of the chip, to throw it into the street. He suppressed the impulse, turned the chip over slowly in his fingers. Eventually he got back into the car and pushed the chip into his pocket.

  He filled the Peugeot’s tank, his mind racing, searching for answers. Why did Ditmir and his people want to know where he was? Did they still suspect that Daniel represented some law-enforcement agency? Did they want to take precautions, be prepared in case they needed to act? Disappear?

  It was still the strongest, simplest explanation. Ditmir was an international black-market arms dealer, part of an extended organised-crime network, with a great deal to lose. Distrustful. Wary. Sly.

  Or was it connected to the Russian he’d seen in the window? Or not seen.

  He paid for the fuel, went to buy a cold drink, came back to the car and got in.

  He sat there for a moment. Be careful of the paranoia. Especially now, after the tension of the roadblock, the shock of the chip.

  He sat a while longer weighing his options. He got out again, walked to the cashier, and asked whether there was a good hotel nearby.

  Cupido and Griessel looked at the soil-sample microscope photos and analysis tables that had been sent on by Forensics. They didn’t understand any of it.

  Cupido called the number, provided by Arnold, for Professor Ian Ford at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Stellenbosch. It rang for a long time. ‘No answer,’ he said.

  Griessel checked his watch. It was after five. ‘They’ve gone home already. We should try again tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ve still got the keys to the umadala’s house, partner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Benna, I scheme we go to Menzi Dikela’s house now. Before Mbali asks for the keys back. And we apply for leave. For tomorrow and the weekend. Give this thing our best shot. Mbali won’t be able to say no in the circumstances.’

  He was committed: he couldn’t pull out now. ‘Okay.’

  They filled in leave application forms, put them on the colonel’s desk, then left, driving separate cars so that Griessel wouldn’t have to go back to Bellville.

  On the way he analysed why he didn’t have much enthusiasm for Cupido’s last great effort. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to contribute to exposing the hijacked SSA for what they were. It wasn’t the pathological and forensic proofs that it was suicide. It was partly because he was scared of the consequences, to his career and job security.

  But most of all it was the feeling he’d had. There in the house. A feeling of . . . tragedy.

  He shook it off. Premonitions took you only so far. He had to examine the facts, as Cupido would say. The questions, the things that didn’t fit.

  He phoned Alexa to tell her he wouldn’t be able to go to Alcoholics Anonymous with her tonight. He had to work.

  Daniel Darret drove to the Hôtel Restaurant Le Quincangrogne on the bank of the Marne River, forty kilometres from Paris. He parked and walked to the reception desk, the microchip in his pocket. He told the young man on duty that he was meeting someone for dinner. ‘I’ll wait there,’ he said, and pointed outside to the seating area, which was visible through the large glass doors. Beside the water. Tables and chairs, a few couches.

  The young man smiled in agreement and Daniel went out. He sat down on a three-seater couch, leaned back comfortably, looked at the tidy lawns, the cool river. He reached into his pocket, took out the chip, stuffed it under the cushion of the couch, with the spikes facing up, so that it would stick to the material.

  He sat for another ten minutes. Then he got up, walked to Reception to say that it didn’t look like his date was going to turn up. He would find somewhere just outside town to stop and unroll the tent. So he could be sure there wasn’t a tracking chip fixed to that too.

  Cupido and Griessel went through Menzi Dikela’s house from one end to the other. Slowly and thoroughly. They began in the garage, moved to the sitting room, kitchen, bedrooms, and ended up in the study.

  Just before seven Kaleni phoned Griessel. She said she had signed the leave applications. She understood that they needed a break. He thanked her. Right after that she phoned Cupido with the same message.

  ‘Now I feel guilty,’ said Griessel.

  ‘We’ll have to suck it up,’ said Cupido.

  It was only when they were in the kitchen that Cupido asked: ‘Benna, why did you say yes to me? To join in the investigation. Why take the risk? At this time?’

  Cupido waited patiently for the answer to come. Griessel was considering his words. Eventually he said: ‘Do you remember last year, December, when I was lying drunk in Caledon Square p
olice cells? When we did the Ernst Richter case?’

  ‘Yebo, yes. Alibi dot co dot za boss. We nailed that sucker.’

  ‘That’s right. You put your career on the line. You protected me. You lied to save my ass.’

  ‘No, Benna. I did cover for you, but Mbali likes you too much. She would have ranted, but she wouldn’t have fired you.’

  ‘Maybe. But that’s not all . . .’

  ‘Shoot. But not with your gun.’

  ‘When I . . . In the old days, the previous dispensation . . . It was rough too. There were many things that . . . Back then I was too chicken to say anything, do anything. And my best excuse was that I was newly married, Anna was pregnant, she wasn’t working. I was scared, Vaughn, in those days, of losing my job. And you know how the system worked. Once you were marked . . . It still bothers me that I didn’t have the guts . . .’

  ‘Partner, you can’t—’

  ‘No, wait, Vaughn, there’s another thing. You. You come from Mitchells Plain. You worked your butt off to make captain. In difficult circumstances. First you weren’t white enough, now you’re not black enough. You had the opportunity to take bribes, more than once. But you didn’t, because you were . . . You’re too proud of the Hawks, of what we do. I know what it means to you. So, if you’re prepared to risk all the years and all the pride, then the least I can do is to stand by you.’

  Cupido, for all his bravado, was never comfortable with too much emotion. So he said: ‘You’re getting soppy in your later years, partner. Age is a bitch.’

  But Griessel could tell that his colleague had liked what he’d said.

  At the side of the road Daniel had searched all the clothing he’d worn the day of the potato farmers’ inspection. There were no other sensors in it. Or in the tent, the packs of ammunition or the cleaning materials.

  He drove on to Paris. With an eye on the rear-view mirror.

  He took the rifle to the flat first, after he had collected the keys at Reception and listened to the woman’s explanation of how the stove, washing-machine and Wi-Fi worked. He took his suitcase up too, but the rest of the camping gear he left in the car. He showered, dressed in fresh clothes, walked to the rue des Rosiers to eat at L’As du Fallafel, one of his favourite spots in the city.

  Doubt still gnawed at him. Over the Russian in Ditmir’s window. Over the Albanian’s motives for planting the tracking device on him. If the Russian really was there, how had he known that Daniel would go to Ditmir? That was the thing that bothered him most.

  It could only mean that one of Lonnie’s cronies had sold them out.

  So could he trust the emails?

  They had reached the study before the detectives found anything of importance – once they had taken all the books out of the bookshelves, shaken them out, put them back and finally moved on to examine the documents in the two-door cabinet below the window, the cupboard in which Lithpel Davids had spotted the network cables.

  They sorted the paperwork: car registration, the proofs of payment for licences, the title deed of the house, the old home mortgage and short- and long-term insurance contracts. Read everything carefully.

  When they’d finished and had packed almost everything back again, they were left with four documents on the desk that told a story.

  And Griessel and Cupido did not like that story.

  Chapter 71

  Friday, 1 September

  Daniel woke just after seven to the rumble of traffic in the voie Georges-Pompidou, realising he had slept reasonably well for the first time since Lonnie May had appeared in Bordeaux, like the angel of death.

  He had grown so weary of the constant wrestling with doubt that, finally, he had decided to ignore all his misgivings and just get on with the job. It was the only way forward.

  First he checked for any emails using a new cell phone. Yesterday on the way to the flat he’d crushed the previous one underfoot and tossed it into a bin.

  There’d been no news from Vula last night. Nor was there any now.

  He brewed some coffee with the machine provided, drank it on the balcony overlooking the building’s small back garden. It was cool and overcast, as if autumn was recognising this official date for change. He read the news from his motherland. There was a report on the president arriving in France. He was here, in this very city, today. Their orbits were on course to intersect.

  Daniel felt his guts contract. Tension. Doubt.

  He read the reports on the back-stabbing and suspected fraud at the Revenue Service, new allegations about the Indian businessmen’s tentacles in the National Railways Agency. He tried to draw some impetus, inspiration from this news.

  The hotels had spoiled him with breakfasts the past week, so he prepared one for himself from the groceries he’d bought yesterday evening at the Franprix on rue Jules-Cousin: bacon and eggs, a toasted baguette, melting with butter and cheese, and orange juice. More coffee to finish.

  Only once the dishes were washed, did he check the phone again. He saw the message with a spasm of anxiety and, at the same time, relief.

  From: vula@protonmail.com

  Subject: We have news

  To: inhlanhla@protonmail.com

  Dear Dr Inhlanhla

  We can confirm that your target will be at the South African ambassador’s residence on rue Cimarosa on Sunday afternoon, from 16.00 to 18.00. From there he will travel to the Hôtel Raphael, 17 avenue Kléber. We have firm intelligence that this will happen between 18.00 and 18.30. He will stay at the hotel until it is time to leave for the airport.

  Good luck,

  Vula

  On Friday Griessel took his bicycle ride after eight to enjoy the ‘day off’, at least in some small way. Up the steep incline of Kloof Nek the rush-hour traffic was heavy, but he turned off left as was his habit, across the flank of Table Mountain. He thought through all the possibilities of what they had discovered yesterday.

  There was nothing concrete. Potentially a new theory. Insubstantial, but there. Cupido had whistled softly through his teeth as he stared at the documents, displayed side by side on Menzi Dikela’s desk, like the chapters in a book. Griessel had been silent: he wasn’t ready to speak about it yet. Cupido limited his commentary to the mournful tune. They both understood the implications, and the advantage of just leaving it there: if you didn’t talk about it, it didn’t really exist.

  Eventually Griessel stacked the pile of evidence and stored it in his murder case.

  ‘We’ll wait for the fingerprints,’ was Cupido’s subdued goodbye before they left for home. The fingerprints on the notepad – the one the suicide note had been torn from – would confirm their new suspicion. Or disprove their theory.

  He was hoping for the latter.

  His phone rang when he was beyond the cable-car station. He stopped cycling, and answered. It was Cupido. He said they had a date with the geology professor in Stellenbosch at eleven. The forensic soil-sample reports and photos had already been sent on.

  Griessel said he would be there.

  ‘Benna, you will phone me when you hear from Forensics?’ said Cupido, still in the muted tones of last night.

  ‘Straight away.’

  He pedalled hard through the final bends of the contour path around Devil’s Peak, then stopped, gasping for air at the King’s Blockhouse, more than two hundred years old. Months before, he’d looked up the history of the structure, as it was frequently his rest stop and turning point. The British had built it as a lookout to cover Table Bay and False Bay after their invasion of the Cape in1795 so that no other force could achieve as easy a victory as they had.

  Griessel looked out over the crystal-clear day, the cold front long since dissipated, the Cape stretching out to the Helderberg as the morning sun climbed the wide skies. This beautiful place, he thought. Such a long history of conflict and treachery and greed.

  When would it end?

  Daniel bought a black hoody jacket at one of the many sports shops in Les Halles, grateful that the
cooler weather made wearing it more appropriate. A hoody remained one of the best methods to hide your face from the cameras.

  He took the RER A-train to the station at Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, emerging just beside the Arc de Triomphe in the Champs-Élysées, then crossed the boulevards into avenue Kléber. He flipped the hood over his head and pulled it down low. He had used his phone map application to prepare, so he knew where the Raphael was, the beautiful, near-century-old art-deco hotel where people like Katharine Hepburn and Marlon Brando had frequently stayed overnight.

  And now his homeland’s scoundrel president.

  He walked past on the west side of the broad street across from the building. He noted the dedicated vehicle-access lane for the hotel. If the president was to be dropped off with a vehicle, Daniel would have twenty to thirty seconds to aim the scope’s crosshairs on him and pull the trigger. A moving target, most likely. But if he could find a good hiding place, he would have enough time to calculate the distance tables and wind before that moment.

  The technical details would be easy. He had been operational in more difficult situations, in the old days. With success.

  The emotional side was the big stumbling block.

  He still didn’t know whether he would be able to bring himself to pull the trigger when those familiar features filled his scope, the head of a man he had once so admired.

  Time to take a look at the ambassador’s residence, the alternative ambush location, where the president would be getting into the vehicle.

  Professor Ian Ford’s office was full of rocks, as were the corridors of the geology building on the Stellenbosch campus.

  He was a tall, ascetic-looking man with a wild grey beard and a strong Australian accent. He told Griessel and Cupido that it was a first for him. ‘Never had the honour to speak to Soggies before,’ he said, and smiled. ‘That’s what we Aussies call our own Police Special Operations Group. Which is more or less the equivalent of the Hawks, I suppose.’