by Tony Park
They paused while their starters were served. Sonja savoured her glass of wine, but took water in between each sip. The sun was rising fast and despite the shade she knew the dangers of dehydration in the dry, dusty bush. She needed to keep a clear head. They had gone over some of this already, in the Lion Sands bar last night, and while she had told Clyde-Smith she wasn’t interested, the other woman was right; she had come here to try to make some sense of Sam’s death, to prove to herself it hadn’t been in vain. Maybe this was a way to honour his sacrifice.
With the Leopards’ training suspended indefinitely there was nothing to keep her in Africa, but she wasn’t ready to go back to her home in Los Angeles yet. The truth was the first world bored her. Her military and mercenary service had hurt her – she had an ongoing battle with post-traumatic stress disorder – yet paradoxically she never felt more together, saner, or more alive, than when she was out in the bush with a gun in her hand.
Sonja was smart enough to realise that she needed to break the nexus between violence and her peace of mind and that someone, probably her, would get seriously hurt in her pursuit of adrenaline and fulfilment. She was like an addict, never able to give up completely, never able to get a good enough high.
‘If I get caught in Mozambique on an assassination mission I’ll spend the rest of my life in some hellhole.’
‘That didn’t stop you in Vietnam, and anyway, I am most certainly not talking about assassinating anybody.’
‘I have nothing to say about that.’ Vietnam had been personal, but Sonja wasn’t about to go into that with Julianne.
‘What if I told you that the man running this poaching syndicate in Mozambique – his name is Antonio Cuna – was one of the biggest rhino horn suppliers to Tran Van Ngo, the man you allegedly killed?’
Sonja set down her knife and fork and pushed back her chair. ‘I’d say you’re playing me and it’s time for me to go.’ She started to stand.
‘Wait, please,’ Julianne said. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet – and it would be criminal for you to miss out on the fillet.’
As if on cue a man walked out of the indoor dining area and bar. In contrast to Julianne the man was dressed about as formally as someone could in this part of Africa. He wore a crisply ironed Oxford shirt, striped tie, chinos and polished brogues. He carried a laptop computer under one arm.
‘Sonja, this is Lieutenant Colonel, retired, James Paterson.’
‘How do you do?’ he asked, smiling, as she took his hand. She wasn’t surprised by the rank. Paterson’s bearing and clothes had ex-officer written all over them, but unlike most of the senior ranks she had met he seemed genuinely pleased to meet someone who might soon fall under his command, if that was what the arrangement was to be. He was a good-looking specimen, physically, and his eyes mirrored his smile. Many officers, in Sonja’s experience, looked at a point in the middle of your forehead when addressing you, so as not to make eye contact like a normal civilian would.
‘James Paterson?’
‘Yes.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Same as the author but only one “t”. Don’t worry, I get it a lot.’
Sonja’s eyes dropped to his tie. ‘Those are the British Army Intelligence Corps colours – green, white and red.’
He had red hair and he fixed her with his green eyes. ‘Well, you should know. Just like me you’re an African who served with the British Army, in the same corps as me.’
‘You two seem to know all about me,’ she said. It was not a pleasant feeling.
‘You served with The Det in Northern Ireland, 14 Intelligence Company.’
Sonja shrugged. ‘So?’
Julianne leaned forward. ‘I hadn’t heard of your unit until James told me about it,’ she said. ‘James – he’s global head of security for all my companies, by the way – explained to me that The Det, as you call it, was unusual in that it was made up of men and women from the British Army who underwent a tough SAS-style selection course and then carried out undercover surveillance operations in Northern Ireland against the IRA during the Troubles.’
Sonja nodded. ‘The higher-ups figured, correctly, that a male squaddie watching terrorists wouldn’t stick out quite as much if he had a woman on his arm, and that solo female operatives would arouse less suspicion than lone men.’
‘And you,’ Julianne said, ‘with your Namibian accent, would have been less likely to have been fingered as a British soldier. Your mother was English as I understand.’
‘You understand? I suppose you even know that she passed away recently. What’s my shoe size?’ Sonja was feeling like an animal being backed into a trap. Her instincts were aroused. ‘You two can stop playing games and cut to the chase, or I’m out of here, with or without the fillet, the smoked trout, peri-peri langoustines, the homemade malva pudding, the lemon meringue pie or the chocolate fondant.’
‘You don’t miss anything, do you?’ Julianne said. ‘Did you memorise my menu?’
‘Surveillance training. The detail counts.’ Sonja took a long look at Paterson. ‘Part of my training was to remember faces and I’ve seen yours – not in the army, but around here. At the Paul Kruger Gate, maybe, waiting to get into the park?’
He flashed her his nice smile. ‘Very probably. Also, although I spend most of my time here at the lodge I own a house at Hippo Rock, where you’ve been staying lately.’
Sonja sat back in her chair. ‘OK, now that is just creepy. Am I under surveillance, or have you been stalking me?’
He laughed. ‘Neither. I’m on the Sabi Sand’s security committee. We vet applications for new staff, contractors, firearms permits, the decision to arm your all-female anti-poaching unit, that sort of thing. Your name and temporary address in South Africa have come across the committee’s desk a couple of times.’
‘Hmm.’
James opened his laptop. ‘The women you were training – that experiment is over. They’ll go back to being domestics, mothers, unemployed.’
‘You sound like you’re happy about that.’
‘Oh, no, you misread me completely,’ Paterson said. ‘I don’t want them to go back to what they were doing, at least not the good ones.’
‘Really?’
Julianne interrupted. ‘I’m not the first person to think it’s worth setting up a special unit to take down the poaching kingpins, to tackle the problem at its source.’
Sonja shook her head. ‘No, nor even the richest. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands tried it with Operation Lock back in the nineties, recruiting a secret force of ex–special forces soldiers to hit poaching gangs across international borders.’
‘Yes, and it cost him his country. He had to abdicate,’ Julianne said. ‘I’m not looking for Rambos. I could find scores of white Afrikaans-speaking former recce-commandos who’d like to take on a mission like this, ditto high-minded former Green Berets from the States or Bear Grylls wannabes from the UK.’
‘So why pick me?’
‘Partly,’ Paterson stepped in, ‘because you’re a woman.’
‘I’ll try not to find that condescending or sexist,’ Sonja said.
‘Good, don’t. Just as it made sense for the British Army to send you to Northern Ireland because the IRA wouldn’t expect us to use women, a female tourist, perhaps part of a couple, will stick out less in Mozambique than a couple of burly white men would.’
‘I get it,’ Sonja said. She wanted to make sure they weren’t just playing at soldiers. ‘Still not interested.’
Julianne leaned closer to her, elbows on the table. ‘We’re not just talking about Mozambique. I have lodges elsewhere in southern and east Africa and poaching’s a problem wherever there’s wildlife. We’ve got intelligence that the poachers are becoming increasingly organised and sophisticated, across borders, and we need a force that’s agile, smart and resourced enough to fight on several fronts. You could pic
k anyone you want, whatever salary they demand. Think how a unit comprised of excellent operators from a variety of backgrounds would work. You could select a couple of your Leopards, black xiTsonga-speaking local women, local men, perhaps people fluent in Portuguese and other languages if you know any.’
‘It sounds like your everyday run-of-the-mill undercover police operation,’ Sonja said.
‘Yes.’ Julianne slapped a hand down on the table. ‘But the police aren’t up to it, especially across borders and in different parts of the continent. In some cases the known criminals are wanted by the police, but the cops are so crooked they never act on that information. We’d force them to act, by gathering irrefutable evidence of where the fugitives are, and exposing them publicly. The honest cops, and there’s no shortage of them, are hamstrung because they don’t have the resources or the jurisdictional authority to carry out the sort of operations we’re proposing.’
‘So it’s a surveillance operation you’re talking about, not a hit squad.’
Julianne held her hands up, palms to Sonja. ‘I’m not recruiting assassins.’
‘At Julianne’s instruction,’ Paterson said, ‘I now spend most of my time as her head of security sourcing intelligence on rhino, elephant and bushmeat poaching in and around where her game reserves and lodges are located. I have a network of informers and I regularly supply information to the South African and other police forces, but we lack our own expert reconnaissance and surveillance team on the ground, here and in the other countries where we operate.’
‘I had you pegged for wanting to cull a few poaching kingpins,’ Sonja said.
Julianne shook her head. ‘I’m mad, maybe, for spending so much time and money on this, but not crazy. Nor am I a murderer. What you’d be doing would be questionable in the eyes of the law, but I’m not telling you to kill poaching kingpins. Get me, get James the intel we need, and we’ll shame the various authorities into action.’
Sonja turned the proposal over in her mind. ‘If we could track poaching gangs in Mozambique from their jumping-off points we could not only work back to who the ringleaders are, but also tip off the South African army and national parks so they could ambush the gangs once they cross the border.’
Julianne leaned back in her chair and smiled. ‘You said it, not me. It would be dangerous, but I’d offer handsome remuneration and insurance policies to all involved, medical aid, and the promise of the best legal representation in the world if there’s trouble.’
Sonja raised her eyebrows. ‘Medical aid? Wow.’
Julianne laughed. ‘You’re not in this for the money, are you?’
Sonja folded her hands across her lap. ‘I haven’t said yes, yet.’
Paterson turned his laptop around so she could see the screen. There was a photo of an African man in a suit, shaking hands with another man, who Sonja recognised as the President of Mozambique.
‘You want me to assassinate the President?’
‘Very funny,’ Julianne said. ‘No, the man we’re after is on the right. That’s the man I mentioned before, Antonio Cuna, a prominent local politician in the town of Massingir and the head of the biggest rhino poaching syndicate in that part of Mozambique.’
‘So?’
‘So it was one of Cuna’s men who killed your partner, Sam Chapman.’
Sonja remained outwardly calm, but she gripped the underside of the table to steady herself in her chair. Just the mention of Sam brought back a rush of emotions.
‘You’re sure?’ she asked, and was annoyed that the croakiness in her voice might betray a little of how she was feeling.
Paterson looked her in the eyes and she saw a kindness there, sympathy without condescension from one soldier to another. ‘Cuna’s gang had a monopoly over the area where Sam was killed. It was one of his people, for sure.’
‘Catch Cuna,’ Julianne added, ‘and you potentially find the man who killed Sam. The man in the photo you are looking at, a friend of the Mozambican President, was the number one supplier of rhino horn to Tran, and no doubt in charge of the man who pulled the trigger.’
‘I see.’ They were trying to hook her, but perhaps she was ready to take the bait.
‘What makes you think we could bring someone like Cuna down if the police in his own country won’t touch him?’
‘He’s a politician,’ Julianne said. ‘Like all of them he’s got his eye on the next election. He can afford to keep paying off the local cops, but if we throw enough mud at him some of it will stick. He might lose favour with the President or, better yet, the government might decide to cut its losses and act. By helping the South Africans interdict and ambush his gangs once they cross the border we’ll starve him of rhino horn and revenue. It won’t happen overnight, but we’ll get him, and the others behind the horrible trade.’
James and Julianne weren’t nutters, Sonja saw, and they were working to some sort of strategy. Clyde-Smith was the wide-eyed idealist, but one with a business brain, and Paterson had the look of a man who could get things done on the field of battle and off it – a soldier with a diplomat’s touch.
She had more questions, plenty of them, but her phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out and looked at the screen. It was Tema. She hadn’t had the woman’s number in her phone until today, as she’d told her to call if she wanted to talk about the killings. Sonja knew that for some people talking things through helped. But not for her.
*
Tema felt the adrenaline coursing through her veins. This was the second most exciting and terrifying thing that had happened to her in her life. The first had been the previous evening when she had been involved in the gun battle with the poachers.
Ten minutes earlier, Shadrack Mnisi, her next-door neighbour for her entire life, had staggered past her house, one arm reaching awkwardly behind him to touch the wound that had soaked the back of his green shirt with blood.
Tema had rushed inside and handed Shine back to her mother.
‘What is it now?’ her mother asked.
‘Shadrack has been cut. His back is bleeding.’
Her mother had clucked at her. ‘Men. They are always fighting.’
‘Shadrack doesn’t fight, or drink, you know that,’ Tema had replied in xiTsonga. She had only been talking about Shadrack this morning, to the policewoman, van Rensburg. What she hadn’t told the detective, because she didn’t think it was relevant, was that Shadrack’s father had been a poacher, who snared impala and other antelope for bushmeat. He would often be selling a haunch of impala illegally in the neighbourhood. But that didn’t mean Shadrack was a criminal, far from it. Shadrack loved the bush and had learned to track from his father. He’d confided to her that he wanted to be a field guide, but he could barely read so the thought of sitting exams for his FGASA – Field Guides Association of South Africa – qualification had stymied a career working with wildlife on the right side of the law.
‘Mother, take care of Shine, please, I must go see.’
‘See what?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Tema walked out of the house and followed Shadrack, who was walking through the gate of his mother’s modest home. Tema stopped, looked around to make sure no one was looking, then cast her eyes down at the ground.
She saw the tracks Shadrack had left in the dust of their unpaved road. There was a split across the sole of the right boot, exactly the same as the one Ezekial had showed her in the bush. Tema froze in the middle of the road.
She took out her phone, a cheap Nokia held together with tape that had been given to her by one of the Hippo Rock home owners. She called Sonja Kurtz.
‘Tema?’
‘Sonja. I have found the man we were tracking before, with Ezekial.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, he lives next door to me. His father was a poacher. He’s cut on the back, from the razor w
ire, and he’s wearing a green shirt and the same boots we saw the tracks from, in the bush.’
‘Tema, be careful. Call the police. Tell them where he is. Where are you?’
‘I’m at my mother’s house, where I live. The man, Shadrack, is my neighbour. There were police here earlier, questioning people, going door to door. I think they’re still somewhere here.’
‘All right, but call the emergency number as well.’
Tema glanced at the house next door to her own. Shadrack had gone inside now. She looked up the street and saw a police bakkie turn onto her road. ‘We’re in luck, I can see the police now. I’m going straight to them.’
‘Be careful, keep me on the line. That man will have a gun. Where is he now?’
‘In his house.’
‘Don’t go in there, Tema.’
Tema ran up the street, past Shadrack’s place. She couldn’t believe it. She knew him well, and they were friends – she even thought he might have a crush on her. She recalled showing off her new Leopards uniform to him, when she had started her training, two months earlier. All that time he must have known that one day they could come face to face in the bush. His crime angered her now. She had to get to the police. She waved the police vehicle to a halt and as she passed his house she imagined him stepping out with his AK-47 and taking aim at her. Shadrack didn’t step out with a rifle, but someone else did. A man emerged from between two houses, Mrs Mabunda’s and Mr Nyathi’s. Tema felt as if she was in a dream when she saw him raise an AK-47 to his shoulder.
‘He’s got a gun!’ she called to the two policemen, who were getting out of the bakkie.
One reached for his pistol, but the rifleman opened fire and sprayed him with bullets. The policeman fell back. The second managed to draw his weapon, but the man with the AK was moving now, advancing, firing as he walked. A head shot put the officer down, killing him instantly.
Tema screamed, adding her voice to a dozen others. Women ran into their houses, babies in their arms, and men scattered. Tema’s training kicked in; she ran across the road and found cover behind a parked car.
