Garrett & Petrus- The Complete Series

by C Marten-Zerf

  Garrett did not speak for a while. Then he pulled a pack of Gauloise from his shirt pocket. Offered. Lit both.

  ‘So, let’s have a beer,’ he said, eventually.

  Petrus took two bottles of Castle lager out of the cooler box, opened them and handed one to Garrett. They touched bottles in a toast and drank deeply.

  In the darkness The Beast snuffled in sorrow. No Manon.

  Chapter 6

  Five men sat around the boardroom table. There seemed to be nothing exceptional about them. Of average height. Expensive suits. Manicured fingernails. Gold wristwatches. Slightly overweight.

  Every one of them was a millionaire. By the end of the month every one of them would be a multi-millionaire.

  As long as everything kept going to plan.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said the man at the head of the table. ‘Is everything still on track?’

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  ‘Mister Gabhela,’ continued the head. ‘You are still shy of the agreed amount.’

  Gabhela nodded. ‘Only a little. It is taking me longer than expected to liquidate my assets.’

  ‘A million dollars is not, just a little, mister Gabhela. A million dollars is actually quite a lot. When will the money be transferred?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘You realize, of course, that timing is everything with this operation? Without your full monetary input you are useless to us. Worse than useless.’

  Despite the glacial air-conditioning Gabhela was starting to sweat. Small, oily beads ran down his face, mounted his small range of double chins and disappeared into his Turnbull and Asser shirt collar.

  ‘Please, it’s only a matter of days.’

  ‘Forty-eight hours, mister Gabhela. Two days. Then we shall have to take steps.’ The head smiled, teeth pulled back to expose Hollywood-white teeth. The expression looked alien on him. Uncomfortable. ‘Please don’t disappoint us, my friend. Not after we have all become so close.’ The head leant back in his chair. ‘Business concluded, gentlemen. Leave me now, I will be in touch.’

  The four men stood up, bowed fractionally and left the room.

  Manhattan Dengana pulled a tabletop humidor towards him, took out a Limitada Cohiba cigar, clipped off the end and lit it with a table lighter. The blue smoke swirled around the air-conditioned room. Lazy spirals of burning money. Manhattan remembered the days during the apartheid era when his entire family would not earn in one month what this single cigar cost. Hunger was an all day feeling, interrupted for a few hours every night by the fitful sleep of exhaustion.

  Manhattan had grown up in SOWETO, the son of a laborer father and a hospital cleaner mother. He had graduated from high school in the early seventies and then gone on to get an engineering degree from the University of Botswana. It was then that he joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC armed wing.

  During the mid to late seventies he went into exile, undergoing military officers' training in the Soviet Union, where he specialized in military engineering.

  He then returned to South Africa and had successfully fought against the SADF for some two years. However, eventually he was captured after a skirmish with the South African security forces and, along with five others, was charged and later convicted of terrorism and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

  The judge sent him to the Robben Island maximum-security prison to serve a 15-year sentence. While imprisoned at Robben Island, he studied for a Doctorate in business administration via correspondence with the University of South Africa. Manhattan was released in June 1990 under the terms of the Groote Schuur Agreement between the National Party government and the African National Congress. He had spent eleven years in prison.

  When he had first got out of prison he had gone into politics, less for political ideals and more for its use as a business tool.

  Now, a mere thirteen years later, he was a multi-millionaire with a large stake in Lonmin Plc gold mines.

  But soon he hoped to be amongst the richest men in Africa.

  ***

  Garrett and Petrus had drunk one beer each and then decided to reminisce while on the road. Time was of the essence in tracking down Freedom and it was imperative that they started straight away.

  They had determined that the best place to start was at the university where the teenager had been abducted. They drove down Empire road and turned into the Men’s Hall of Residence. Garrett pulled into a parking, following Petrus’ directions.

  ‘Here,’ Petrus pointed. ‘He stays in Men’s Res. He was walking a girl home. She stays there, Jubilee Hall. The kidnappers took him here.’

  The two men climbed out of the car. Although there was nothing to look at they walked around the area where the abduction had taken place.

  Garrett bent down and examined a few small drops of blood. Already faded and light brown from the sun. ‘Whose?’

  ‘Not Freedom’s. Apparently he slugged one of them pretty good. Then they pulled a gun, fired in the air and gapped it with him.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘Lots. No help though. Three white men. A white RV. They put him in the back and drove off. No one remembered any license numbers or such.’

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘She lives there,’ Petrus pointed at the Jubilee hall.

  ‘Let’s see if she’s there. Have a chat.’

  They walked over to the high-rise hall of residence and went into the lobby. There was a desk with a receptionist and two security guards. Garrett hung back while Petrus chatted to the guards and then to the receptionist. He beckoned to Garrett.

  ‘Her name’s Liezl. They’ve phoned her and she’s coming down. Let’s take a seat there.’ They went over to a cluster of seats at the far end of the reception area, sat and waited.

  After ten minutes or so the elevator doors opened and a girl walked out. She was tall and blonde. Tight vest top, large breasts, short loose skirt and two-mile long legs. Earrings, ethnic bead bangles and necklaces, a touch of mascara and pink lip-gloss. Small handbag slung over one shoulder. She radiated an aura of wanton sexuality in the megawatt range. Garrett raised an eyebrow and Petrus grinned in unconcealed appreciation.

  Both of the men stood up as she approached. She held out her hand. Garrett shook it, her grasp firm, skin soft. Then she shook Petrus’ hand. Held it for slightly longer than propriety dictated. Petrus’ smile grew even larger.

  ‘Goie more, kerels.’

  ‘Could you speak English, please,’ asked Petrus. ‘My friend isn’t much of a linguist.’

  ‘Sorry, I said, good morning guys,’ she smiled at Garrett. ‘I’m Liezl. I believe you’re here to talk about Freedom. Are you cops or something?’

  ‘I’m Freedom’s uncle. Petrus.’

  ‘Freedom talked about you often. Funny, I thought that you’d be older.’

  ‘I am,’ replied Petrus. ‘This is my friend, Garrett.’

  ‘Tell us, Liezl, how did it happen?’

  The blonde Afrikaans girl took them through the kidnapping, her telling of it succinct and without embellishment.

  ‘And the men,’ said Garrett. ‘Can you describe them?’

  ‘Ja, but it won’t do any good. They were the classics, six-foot or so, short blonde hair, tanned, blue eyes, well built. Afrikaans boys.’

  Garrett swore under his breath. ‘Not much to go on.’

  Liezl opened her bag and rummaged around for a bit. ‘Here,’ she offered something to Garrett. ‘They left this.’

  Garrett took the offering. It was a short, squat empty brass cartridge. He turned it over in his hand. On the base was stamped IMI .50. It was a cartridge that he didn’t know. He handed it to Petrus.

  ‘Seen this before?’

  The Zulu studied it. ‘No. It’s huge. I’ve got a friend, has a small gun shop in the Fourways area. We can ask him.’ He turned to Liezl. ‘Why didn’t you give this to the police?’

  She shrugged. ‘What’s the point?’

  Petrus smiled. ‘True. Ca
n we keep it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The two men stood up. ‘Thank you,’ said Garrett. Petrus winked at the girl. She watched them walk to the pick-up before she turned and went up to her room.

  Chapter 7

  Kobus shifted his stance and switched his crutch from under his right armpit to his left. The old fashioned wooden support had been modified with an additional length of wood dowel that had been wired to the end so that it fit under his arm. Normal crutches are not designed to be used by someone who is six foot seven tall.

  He wore a pair of old gray trousers that were at least six inches short so his right ankle and lower calf showed bare to his single shoe. The shoe itself was in fairly good condition, save that the end had been cut off so it would fit the tall man’s size seventeen foot. On his left side the lack of trouser length showed six inches of sweat-darkened mahogany, crudely fashioned to resemble a lower leg and foot. The prosthesis was not articulated, nor was it anatomically correct. It was simply a dead lump of wood where a living lower limb used to be.

  The top half of his body was clothed in a poncho that had been fashioned out of a wool blanket with a hole cut in the middle. Under that he had a shirt that was as short as the trousers. In an attempt to retain some semblance of neatness he had trimmed his hair with a knife. Likewise his beard. He had achieved a ragged, chopped look that would have cost a fortune in one of Johannesburg’s top hair salons. But all that he was worried about was looking kempt enough so as not to frighten people away.

  In his left hand he held a small, neatly written cardboard sign.

  ‘Unemployed. Please help. Willing to work for food. God bless you all.’

  It had been a tough day, the sun was a hammer of heat on his head and the glare off the tarmac seemed to scorch his very brain. Someone had given him a pack of cigarettes, Camel, expensive. He had gotten no offers of work but had garnered a handful of small change. But now rush hour was over. It was time to start the walk back to his shack. He folded his sign, tucked it into his waistband and started down the road.

  Kobus lived on the very outskirts of Alexandra. This was unusual as Alex was traditionally a black township. The big man could have opted to live in a white squatter camp like Coronation Park or Sunshine Corner or any one of another eighty white squatter camps in the area that held upwards of two hundred thousand disenfranchised white Afrikaners. But he would not.

  Some twenty plus years ago Kobus had been a sergeant in the South African Defense Force Koevoet counter-insurgency unit. They had been renowned as one of the world’s most efficient fighting forces with a kill ratio of over thirty-two to one. They had also been notorious for committing savage acts of cruelty on both enemy and civilians alike. And ultimately, regardless of their prowess, Kobus and his compatriots had lost the war. They had also lost their own humanity in the process. As such, Kobus figured that he no longer deserved to have a people. Friends. Family. He had declared himself outcast and thus lived on the very fringes of an already peripheral society.

  He had lost his lower left leg below the knee in the last days of the war and had been discharged along with thousands of other soldiers into a world that he was neither welcomed nor that he understood. The state had provided him with a basic prosthesis, aluminum with a partly articulated ankle. That had long since worn out and he was refused a replacement. So he had fashioned his own limb. It worked but it was painful if he walked or ran for any period of time.

  But Kobus welcomed both the pain and the hardships. He welcomed every new day that the Lord saw fit to punish him for his past transgressions against humanity. The only thing that he retained from his past life was his small military-issue bible. He read it every night until the light had faded and darkness bade him to sleep. Or to simply lie awake in the gloom.

  He stopped at a local convenience store and brought a half loaf of bread and a pint of full cream milk. The shopkeeper gave him two cents to make up the cost.

  After another twenty minutes of walking Kobus was close to his dwelling.

  ‘Hey, Mithi,’ shouted someone.

  Kobus smiled and turned to face the caller. A small boy, perhaps nine years old. Tattered clothes and mismatching shoes held together with string.

  ‘How are you, Mithi?’ Mithi was short for Indlulamithi, the Zulu word for Giraffe. Literally translated it meant, as tall as the trees. It was little Sifiso’s nickname for the big man.

  ‘I see you, Udokotela.’ Kobus called the small boy The Doctor, because he was forever looking after his sick mother. A woman of indeterminate age that was dying of some wasting disease. Kobus had met her a few times and was convinced that she had AIDS. He had said nothing to the small boy. ‘How is your mother?’

  Sifiso shook his head. ‘Very sick, Mithi. She doesn’t even talk.’

  ‘When did she last eat?’

  ‘A long time. I have not found food for two days now.’

  Kobus handed his bread and milk over to the boy. ‘Here, take this to her. Dip the bread in the milk so that she can swallow easily.’

  Sifiso took the offering with two hands and bowed deeply. ‘Thank you, baba, father.’

  Kobus nodded and went on his way. His stomach grumbled in complaint. He too had not eaten for a couple of days. But he had some cigarettes. And water. He was not sick. He would survive…or not. That was up to the Lord.

  ***

  Pete drove his men hard. Each of them ran carrying a full sized car tire above his head. On each back a haversack with twenty house bricks in it. On each hip a full water bottle. They had arisen before the sun and by now had run for over five miles around the sun-baked parade ground.

  Pete was pleased. He raised a whistle to his lips and blew. The men turned as one and ran back to form up in front of him.

  ‘Drop them.’ There was a crash of sound as the tires and backpacks hit the ground. ‘Now drink.’

  The big Afrikaner looked at his recruits with pride. There were more now. Their numbers had swelled to forty-three in the last couple of days. Their time was getting closer and, as such, their training regime grew tougher. He let them stand easy for a while as he stood and thought. He had phoned Sipho Mabena at four o’clock that morning and asked him where the weapons were. Sipho had vacillated. He needed more time, he said. The weapons cache had been split up into multiple small lots and would take weeks to get back together. Pete believed him. It made sense. Sipho asked for three weeks. Pete gave him three days.

  And now it was time to provide the father with a little motivation. He walked amongst his recruits, studying them as he did so. He needed two of them. They must be the right type.

  ‘Lappies.’

  ‘Kommandant.’

  ‘Step forward.’

  The young Afrikaner broke rank. He stood six foot four, over two hundred pounds, cropped blond hair and eyes of Atlantic blue.

  Pete continued through the ranks, eventually stopping at a clone of the first man that he had chosen. ‘Stephanus.’

  ‘Kommandant.’

  ‘Front up. You two follow me.’

  The three men went into the house and trooped down the corridor to Freedom’s room. Pete unlocked the door and ushered the other two in.

  Freedom had been lying on the single bed and he sat up as the men entered.

  ‘Good morning, Freedom,’ greeted Pete.

  Freedom nodded.

  ‘I had a talk to your father this morning. It appears that he is trying to help.’ Pete took his cell phone out of his pocket. Flipped it open. ‘Remarkable things these,’ he said to Freedom. ‘I remember, back in the 1980s, when the first cell phones came out. Huge. Like carrying around a house brick. Big aerial. More like a field radio than a phone. Barely fit for purpose.’ He pushed a button. ‘Now, cell phones can take photos, video, messages. Incredible really.’ He focused the phone onto Freedom and activated the video. ‘Lappies, Stephanus, show Freedom’s father that we are serious men.’

  The two large Afrikaners reacted instantly. One pick
ed Freedom up from the bed and the other punched him hard in the stomach. The black man folded over and dropped to the floor.

  ‘No, no, no, gentlemen,’ said Pete. ‘The face. Make it messy, I want to ensure that our intentions are clearly understood.’

  The video capacity lasted for three minutes. It was long enough. Pete waved the young recruits away, lifted Freedom’s unconscious body from the floor and placed him on the bed in the recovery position. He checked his pulse and ensured that his airways were clear. He would live.

  Pete scrolled down his contacts menu, selected a number and sent the video to Sipho Mabena.

  Then he smiled. A job well done.

  ***

  Little Sifiso sat next to his mother. The shack that they lived in was little more than a lean-to of wood and cardboard. A giant’s card-house constructed with careless hands.

  The boy took a tarnished tin mug, filled it halfway with milk and soaked a piece of bread in it. Then he squatted next to his mother.

  ‘Here, mama. The big man gave us some food.’ He pushed the wet bread against his mother’s lips. ‘Please eat, mama. Please.’ He pushed harder. Milk ran down her chin and dripped on the raw soil floor. Precious white pearls that shattered and drained away.

  Sifiso gave up and ate the bread himself. Then he curled up next to his mother and went to sleep.

  She had been dead for two days now.

  In the morning little Sifiso would try to feed her again.

  Chapter 8

  Petrus pushed the doorbell. The electronic lock buzzed and clicked and the steel door swung open. Garrett and he walked in. The door closed automatically behind them and then the next door opened letting them into the shop.

  The gun shop was small but well stocked. Lots of shotguns, high-end over and under sporting models, hunting rifles and scopes. Some bows and arrows. In the glass topped counter a small selection of handguns. Revolvers and semi-autos. Thousands of boxes of ammunitions in shelves behind the counter as well as a case of bladed weapons. The air-conditioning was set to arctic. The place smelled of gun oil and frost. Vaguely unpleasant.