by Tony Park
‘Being part of this new unit would mean you would be away from your daughter, sometimes for weeks on end.’
‘If I got a job in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve even, or in the park, I would be away for weeks, living in staff quarters. My mother would take care of Shine, just as she did when I was a maid at a lodge. We are used to hardship.’
‘This work, it would involve surveillance, following people, living in the bush, watching where the poachers are based, who their leaders are, who is dealing in rhino horn and ivory. We might be working outside of South Africa, undercover.’
Tema nodded. ‘I understand. My father was a Shangaan from Maputo, in Mozambique. I speak Portuguese, as well as English and xiTsonga.’
Yes, Sonja thought, and you’re bright, courageous and dedicated. ‘If you come with me, I will make sure they pay you a good wage, that you have medical aid, and that Shine will be looked after.’
‘Looked after when?’
‘In case . . .’
‘Oh,’ said Tema. ‘That is good. It is fine. If I hadn’t had my baby I was going to join the army. I wanted to try and become an officer, but there were not enough vacancies for women. I thought the Leopards would be the next best thing. I want to help my country, Sonja, help the animals and make sure they are still around for my daughter’s generation to appreciate them.’
Sonja swallowed hard and looked away. Tema’s uncle turned into the hotel’s driveway, near the ladies who were packing up their roadside curio stalls for the night. The entry gate to the Kruger Park was closed.
The uncle pulled up under the covered parking area at reception. Sonja looked Tema in the eye. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re on the team.’
‘Oh, thank you, Sonja.’ Tema put two hands on her heart. ‘You have made me so happy.’
Sonja waved them goodbye and Tema climbed down and got into the cab with her uncle.
It had been a shitty couple of days, but Sonja was pleased that she’d at least been able to give Tema something to smile about after the terrible time she’d had. The girl might still live to regret it, but Sonja sensed she had the strength of mind, body and heart to make a good operator.
She needed a drink, so instead of going straight to the concierge or trying to sort out a room for the night she followed the dark planking of the walkway towards the bar down on the river.
It was a pretty spot, set amid massive old jackalberry trees that lined the banks of the Sabie River. Off to her right was the circular open-air boma, where staff were setting tables for the nightly buffet. A fire was already burning in the central pit and lanterns cast golden light on the proceedings.
Sonja broke into a smile when she saw, still some way ahead of her, Hudson Brand emerge from the men’s bathroom near the upstairs bar and head towards the river. Sonja felt affection for him flood through her. Perhaps she had been too quick to judge him; she had let her emotions after the firefight cloud her judgement. She quickened her step to catch up with him, but she didn’t call out to him, planning instead to surprise him.
Hudson walked up the steps to the deck overlooking the river and signalled to the barman, at the bar on the left, with two fingers.
Sonja slowed as she approached the steps and watched as he took a seat next to a red-headed woman, who threw back her head and laughed loudly at something he said as he sat down.
Sonja saw how the woman played with her hair with the fingers of her right hand. She leaned closer to Hudson and touched him on the arm to punctuate some flirtatious point. He laughed. The barman came and Hudson took a beer and a cocktail from a tray. The man cleared half a dozen empty glasses from the table between them.
It was too much for her to take in, and she was in no mood for a confrontation or more excuses. Sonja turned on her heel and retraced her steps. As she walked she took her phone out of the breast pocket of her fatigues and dialled.
‘Excuse me, madam.’
Sonja looked up from the phone. A young woman in the hotel’s uniform was ushering a party of guests in safari clothes into the main bar, near reception. She put up a hand to stop Sonja.
‘What is it?’ Sonja asked, not even trying to hide her annoyance.
‘Ma’am, sorry, but a leopard has been spotted in the hotel grounds, over there beneath the walkway.’ The woman gestured to the lushly vegetated central area, surrounded by the bar and upstairs restaurant on one side and walkways leading to the guest rooms on the other.
‘So?’
‘So, ma’am, we’re asking everyone to please move inside, into the bar, until the leopard has gone.’
‘No.’ The big cat had obviously crossed the Sabie River, which this late in the winter dry season was very low. It was probably in search of one of the bushbuck that lived around the hotel.
‘No, ma’am?’
‘No.’ Sonja lifted her camouflage shirt to show the woman the nine-millimetre Glock pistol on her hip. ‘I spend my nights in the bush on anti-poaching patrols surrounded by leopards and lions.’
‘Well, I’m asking nicely, ma’am, and safety is our priority here.’
‘Noted, now leave me alone.’
The young woman looked for a moment like she might stand up to Sonja, but two more guests, speaking French, had just wandered up from the viewing deck bar so the woman turned her attention to softer targets.
Sonja walked on, dialling again, and stopped by the hotel’s curio shop, whose nervous staff were peering out the window. She waited for the call to go through.
‘Sonja?’ Julianne Clyde-Smith said on the other end.
‘I didn’t know you had my number,’ Sonja said, somewhat taken aback.
‘Yes, and I took the liberty of saving it to my phone. We’re very thorough, you know.’
‘I do know.’ Sonja shrugged off her irritation. They’d done their background checks on her for good reason, and the level of information they’d gathered on her told her they were serious about taking the fight to the poaching syndicates and gaining usable intelligence on them. That was good; this was no game for amateurs.
‘Have you made a decision about my offer?’
Sonja paused, wavering. She was not a woman given to indecision. In the heat of battle one had to make split-second decisions. A bad decision was sometimes better than taking no action at all. She thought again about Hudson Brand, about giving herself a holiday and turning her back on long cold nights in the bush, mosquitos, wild animals, and, inevitably, more blood.
Then she saw him. Them.
Sonja dropped back behind a giant decorative clay pot, which was almost as tall as she was. Hudson Brand was coming along the walkway, from the deck bar, holding the hand of the red-haired woman he’d been talking to.
The young female manager stopped them, but she had a chat with Brand and he was allowed to move on, without even showing her his gun. Brand led the woman towards Sonja, but she stayed out of sight. They turned right and headed off towards the guest rooms.
Sonja made a fist with her free hand. ‘Yes, I’ve made a decision.’
Chapter 6
Tema packed her camouflage uniforms and her civilian clothes in the green kitbag she had been issued with when she joined the Leopards.
Her mother walked into her bedroom, carrying Shine. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
Tema felt something squeeze her heart as she looked at her daughter’s curls, her plump cheeks. For a moment she wavered, but then told herself the best chance Shine had was for her to work hard and make enough money to guarantee both their futures. ‘I’m lucky to have a job. The Leopards are being put on hold. The other girls are all out of work for now.’
‘It’s so dangerous. It’s not our fight.’
Tema pursed her lips. Her mother had never been into the Kruger National Park, nor the adjoining Sabi Sand Game Reserve. She’d told Tema many times that she though
t people were mad going into animal country. Her people had been banned from even entering the park through most of the apartheid era in South Africa, unless they worked in menial jobs in the reserve.
‘I don’t like it,’ her mother said.
Tema came to her and took Shine from her arms. She loved her little girl’s smell and the warmth of her tiny body. ‘The money will be good, according to Sonja. I’ll be able to send you some, and put some away for Shine.’ The baby gurgled and she held her to her breast and kissed her head. Her mother took the child from her and it was like losing a limb. Tema drew a breath and told herself to harden up, an expression Sonja often used.
‘You should go and see Shadrack’s mother, before you leave.’
‘Mother . . .’
‘You need to see the result of your actions.’
Tema sighed. Shadrack’s family and their small community were once more seeing the result of the actions of poachers. As long as young men kept accepting money from the middlemen and poaching kingpins for horn, then the toll of dead rhinos and dead people would continue.
Her mother had told her that Mrs Mabunda’s son had been picked up by the police last week. He was just fifteen years old, but a man had offered the boy and three of his friends ten thousand rand each to take a rifle into the Kruger Park and try to shoot a rhino. The inexperienced teenagers had been caught almost immediately by an army patrol on anti-poaching duty. They had been watching the drift where the boys crossed the river.
‘I will go see his mother,’ Tema said. Whatever he had done, Shadrack had been her friend, and she had been up half the night replaying the terrible, yet adrenaline-charged moment when she had fired her weapon.
Tema left her bag by the door, went outside into the bright morning sunshine and trudged through the dust to the house next door. A dozen bakkies and cars in varying stages of disrepair were parked outside the house, other mourners come to pay their respects. A crow wheeled overhead, squawking down at her.
Tema walked up to the open front door. A man stepped into the doorway, blocking her way. He wore a black vinyl jacket and folded his arms across his chest. She recognised him, but not by name – he was one of Shadrack’s uncles.
‘How dare you come here?’
Tema looked down. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve come to pay my respects.’
‘Get away from here, you traitorous bitch.’
She looked up. ‘You have no need to call me that.’
‘You sell out your own people, you shoot a poor simple boy you have known since childhood; what else am I to call you?’
Tema swallowed. He had the look of a bully. Shadrack’s mother had gone to work more than once with bruises on her face when her husband had still been alive and his brother, this man, looked like the kind who would hurt women. Too many men, Tema knew, were like that.
‘Yes, Shadrack was my friend, but I don’t know what happened to him, why or how these people convinced him to work for them.’
He pointed a finger at her. ‘These people are your people. You are the murderer, you are a disgrace.’
Tema felt small. She thought she was working in anti-poaching for South Africa, because the wildlife belonged to everyone – that was what Sonja had said. But she knew that some people in her community thought they had a right to take animals, birds, fish – whatever they wanted – from the game reserve and the Kruger Park. It was true what the man said; to some she was the enemy.
There was movement behind the man and Anna, Shadrack’s mother, brushed the man aside. She was wearing her best Sunday clothes and her eyes were red from crying. ‘Tema.’
Tema felt her bottom lip start to tremble. She looked down, and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Anna came to her, down the two steps and wrapped her big soft arms around her and pulled her to her bosom. ‘So am I, Tema. I’ve known you since you were a baby, carried you, cared for you.’
Tema looked up again, the plump smooth cheeks as familiar to her as her own mother’s face. ‘They had guns.’
‘So the police told me. But I don’t know how that happened. You knew Shadrack, you knew how gentle he was, what kind of boy he was.’
Tema nodded. None of it made sense. ‘They were shooting at us, at me and the policeman, at the helicopter.’
‘My Shadrack was shooting at you?’
Tema looked down at her feet.
‘Answer me, girl.’
‘The other man . . .’
Anna put a finger under Tema’s chin and lifted her face. ‘“The other man”? Tell me, was my Shadrack pointing a gun at you and shooting?’
Tema blinked. It was suddenly hard for her to breathe. ‘He had an AK-47, a rifle, like the poachers use, and his boot was cut.’
‘Boot?’
‘We tracked the man who killed Patience Mdluli; maybe he also killed Goodness. He was wearing a pair of boots and the sole of the right boot was sliced. He also cut his back on razor wire, leaving the Sabi Sand reserve, and I saw that Shadrack had a cut on his back and his shirt.’
Anna looked away and wiped the tears that had sprung again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Tema said. ‘It wasn’t just me who was shooting.’
The older woman nodded. ‘I saw my son. My little boy. He was riddled with bullet holes.’
Tema felt her own tears welling. ‘I was just doing my job.’
‘You did a very good job.’
Anna turned her back to Tema. The uncle stepped up to the doorway again and pointed his finger at her.
‘We will not forget you,’ he said.
Tema wiped her eyes and glared back at him. He slammed the door in her face.
She walked back to her house. Tema would have given anything for Shadrack to still be alive. However, the man with him had been doing his best to kill her, the policeman, and the people in the helicopter. Tema and Sonja had done what they needed to do to protect themselves and the others with them.
Shadrack had become mixed up in this terrible business somehow, and he had at the very least been an accomplice to a serious crime.
Tema’s mother met her at the door, her arms folded across her chest. ‘You are leaving now?’
She nodded. ‘Miss Kurtz, Sonja, is coming to pick me up.’
Tema walked past her mother to her room and picked up Shine from her cot. It was second-hand, a gift from one of the white women whose houses she’d once cleaned. The baby’s jumpsuit she had bought from a stall selling second-hand clothes donated by people overseas to help poor Africans. One day, she told herself, my daughter will have new clothes, a good education, and a fine house. She kissed Shine, held her tight to her chest, then set her down.
The baby smiled and gurgled up at her. Tema blew her a kiss and went back to her mother.
‘I’m going to walk for a bit,’ Tema said. She hefted her kitbag onto her shoulder.
Her mother held her at arm’s length, her bony hands on her shoulders. ‘Be careful.’
‘I will.’
‘You believe in what you are doing.’
Tema nodded, then swallowed as she felt tears rising again. ‘I do, but it’s hard sometimes.’
‘The right thing often is.’
Tema hugged her mother and walked out of the house.
Chapter 7
Hudson Brand woke up in the master bedroom of the house at Hippo Rock, alone.
He had no safari clients today and had slept in. He opened the curtains and the glass sliding door. The morning air was still crisp as he walked out onto the wooden deck overlooking the Sabie River. A fish eagle circled, looking for breakfast, and then dived.
Hudson shaded his eyes with a hand and saw the bird skim the water and take off with a wriggling barbel in its talons.
He went back inside, pleased with the way the day had begun, and went to the ba
throom and dressed. When he got to the refrigerator he surveyed its meagre contents and was reminded of Sonja; he detested tomato sauce but hers was in the door.
He thought about Rosie Appleton as he took out an egg and the remains of a packet of bacon, along with two slices of bread.
Hudson knew the duty manager at the Protea Hotel, Simone, and she had told him it was no problem for him to escort Rosie to her room while the hotel staff looked for the leopard that had invaded the hotel grounds. Hudson was an experienced safari guide so would know what to do if he encountered a big cat on the walkway – stand still, stop Rosie from running, and pray it wasn’t an old cat with bad teeth who was going to make its last meal the easiest one of its life.
When he got to the room Rosie had asked him in for a drink.
‘No, thanks,’ he’d said, replaying the conversation in his head.
‘I’m scared,’ she said.
He didn’t believe her; the half-smile betrayed her.
He’d been tempted.
Even now, he didn’t quite know why he hadn’t gone in for that drink, why he’d begged off, saying he had an early start this morning, when he didn’t.
He supposed, now, as he scooped the bacon and egg onto the bread and took his breakfast, and a Coke, out onto the deck, that things were over between him and Sonja, if they had ever really been on at all.
A herd of elephants was making its way down the well-trodden game trail on the dusty red earth bank on the Kruger Park side of the river. In the lead was the matriarch, head and shoulders above her eldest daughter, and with a new tiny calf in tow.
The elephants had it simple. The women were in charge and the males followed them around, waiting for a chance to have sex. When they were done the guys drifted off, sometimes forming small bachelor groups where an old bull would be accompanied by a couple of young males, known as askaris, or guards. Eventually, when the females returned and the askaris went into musth, they would challenge their mentor and they’d all duke it out. The winner would get the girl. Simple.
