Murderous

by David Hickson

  “Manned radio,” said the pilot, and transferred the pencil to the other side of his mouth. He held up the small tube of fuel he’d drawn from the wing and studied it for traces of water, then tossed the contents onto the ground. “Those clowns couldn’t control a kid’s party. They should’ve put up an NDB. With this low cover the place is damn near impossible to find – have to fly in on the GPS, and most of those old army planes have nothing but pressure gauges.” He gave the wing a satisfied slap. “They’re flying a right-hand pattern just so as they don’t get wet. Any of the locals come in they’re gonna get a nasty surprise. Head-on kind of surprise. Mind you,” he added with a glance in my direction, “don’t suppose many of the locals that rent space in that hangar are still with us.”

  “It wasn’t the entire town,” I said.

  “NGK,” he said, pronouncing the letters in the Afrikaans way, with a rolling G like he was clearing his throat, followed with a ‘car’ for the K. “Dutch Reformed … that’s all the farmers would have been there, isn’t it?” He sighed and shook his head. Then with an effort he assumed a bright facade. “OK then, we’re A-OK,” he said. “You can get your comrades loaded up. We’ll be getting up there as soon as this guy hits the ground.” He looked up at the low cloud which had started to spit raindrops at us. I could hear the sound of a distant engine. The man with the binoculars took them away from his eyes and scanned the sky without their assistance. There was nothing to be seen except the heavy cloud base.

  “Dakota,” declared the pilot. “They’re bringing in the troops. Show the press they’re doing something.” He gazed at me as if gauging his audience and shifted the pencil to the other side. “Pretending the whole thing wasn’t their idea.”

  “Their idea?”

  “Sure,” said the pilot, “the final solution, isn’t it?”

  “Final solution to what?”

  “It’s why you guys are here. I’m not as stupid as I look. You’re not here to assist with the investigation. Quick in and out like this. You definitely aren’t police, and that nice lady,” a glance over to Khanyi, huddled into a sheepskin-lined leather jacket that looked like it had been loaned to her by the hero of a war movie who would not be returning. “That fine lady,” resumed the pilot, after a moment of appreciation, “has never worn a uniform in her life, that’s for sure. You’ve got secret service written all over you.”

  Khanyi looked over at us as if she’d heard him say secret service. She was getting ready for the crying scene now and hugged the jacket tighter.

  “Final solution to what?” I repeated.

  “To having us whities around.” He watched me to see how I took that. I took it pretty well. An understanding nod, as if it was a problem we shared.

  “Genocide,” he said. “That’s what they’re doing.”

  “You suggesting what happened in the church was state-sponsored genocide?”

  “Nah, nothing so obvious. It’s subtle what the wogs are doing. But it’s real. White genocide, the world knows about it, just nobody does anything. They all hold their breath and wait to see how long we last. Then afterwards they’ll build the memorials and say how terrible it was. Like they did with the Jews. That was years of genocide, and who did anything? Only afterwards they put up the plaques and sang the songs.”

  “That’s absurd. You can’t compare the Holocaust to a one-off madman with a gun.”

  “Nothing one-off about it,” said the pilot, and he stretched his lips into a grimace that looked like he was trying to get the blood flowing in his face again. I wondered whether news of the church graffiti had leaked out. “Six million Jews killed in the Second World War,” he said. “You know how many of us whities there are here? Four and a half million, that’s how many of us are left. You do the math.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but his attention was diverted. “Looks like they’ll make it after all,” he said. Above the trees at the far end of the strip the dark shape of a Dakota had torn a hole in the cloud and was dropping at an alarming rate towards the ground, trailing a flurry of angry swirls of cloud. It looked as if the pilot had misjudged his rate of descent and the plane was going to dive into the field, but at the last moment the nose of the heavy transporter pulled up like a horse shying away from the hard ground. The landing lights threw a shower of sparks through the rain. We all held our breath as the wheels approached to within a few feet of the ground and then miraculously held there as the great beast of a plane floated. Then sprays of water kicked up from the wheels as it subsided onto the grass, and it raced past the hangar with its rear wheel still up in the air. The whine of the brakes bounced back at us from the echoing chamber of the hangar, and Khanyi applauded.

  “Only way to do it,” said our pilot, “short strip, high trees. Those guys know what they’re doing, I’ll give them that. Better get your chieftess and the old guy loaded up. They’ll be bringing in more of those babies and we don’t want to get caught between them and this patch of grass.”

  Our Beechcraft had the passenger seats arranged in conversational mode, with the front two seats facing towards the tail, and a convenient fold-out table provided for drinks, or for buff folders with photographs of dead people and graffiti painted with their blood. Fehrson insisted that Khanyi and I occupy the rear-facing seats. “I am facing my death head-on,” he said. Which meant that Khanyi and I had to face our deaths with our rear ends.

  “Buckle up tight, lady and gents,” called our pilot as we rolled down the strip towards the hill above the town of little hope. “All that cotton wool above us is gonna make things a little bumpy. I’d advise you not to hit the booze until we’re through it.” He had obviously forgotten Khanyi’s instructions to leave the liquor cabinet locked. Our flight out that morning had been a sober one, but I had caught Fehrson eyeing the liquor cabinet on several occasions. We reached the end of the strip and turned about to face back down the runway. A rain squall took the plane by the wings and gave it a good shake.

  “This plane can handle weather like this?” asked Fehrson doubtfully.

  “We got here in one piece,” said Khanyi in a voice that she had probably intended to sound soothing, but her jaw was tight and teeth gritted.

  “That was before the hurricane hit,” said Fehrson, and he gave his seatbelt another check.

  “It’s just a bit of rain, Father,” said Khanyi. “We’ll be okay in this weather?” she called to the pilot. He turned to us and gave a thumbs up sign, then laughed, which seemed inappropriate and not particularly comforting.

  We sat at the end of the runway, and through the side windows watched the hangar disappear behind a curtain of rain. Our pilot spoke into his headset, flashed his landing lights and kept his foot on the brakes, the throttle pressed forward so that the plane buzzed and vibrated like a trapped fly.

  “Why are we not moving?” asked Fehrson.

  “Short strip,” I said, and before Fehrson could say anything further the pilot released the brakes and we were treated to the full force of the twin engines at maximum throttle.

  The field was not smooth. I could see why the pilot wanted to lift up as soon as possible. There were molehills, and craters that were just the right size to trap the wheels of the Beechcraft, and we jostled and bumped over them as the plane picked up speed, then suddenly Khanyi and I were tilted forward towards Fehrson, the drumming of the wheels stopped and the ground dropped away.

  “I’ll have a whisky,” said Fehrson.

  “The liquor cabinet is locked,” said Khanyi.

  “Give it a try, will you, Ben?” said Fehrson. “There’s a good lad.”

  It wasn’t locked.

  “It’s less than an hour, Father,” said Khanyi.

  “Better make it a double then,” said Fehrson, and he checked his seatbelt as the clouds tossed us about.

  “Who was it?” I said as we broke free of the cloud and I realised why our pilot had kept his sunglasses on. Fehrson winced, blinked in a confused way, and then looked at Khanyi
expectantly as if he also wanted to know the answer to my question.

  “Who was what?” she asked.

  “Who did you have in that church?”

  “Have in the church?” said Khanyi, but she glanced at Fehrson and I knew I was right.

  “Your pretty pictures of hyenas are not the reason you dragged me out of bed at the crack of dawn. You have teams of people on the payroll who could figure this out for you, but instead you chartered a commercial plane, dragged me around like a sightseeing tourist and now you’re going to spin a yarn about how I’m the only one who can help. As someone who hasn’t been on your payroll for over a year, I find it a little odd. It’s been a lovely reunion. But shall we all stop pretending? I’m guessing you had someone in that church. Who was it?”

  Khanyi shifted in her seat, and Fehrson took a sip of his whisky, discovered that the glass was empty and glared at it accusingly. Khanyi broke the silence.

  “It was Dirk,” she said. “Dirk Fourie.”

  I remembered Dirk. A young and enthusiastic recruit who had decided the key to his future was to make tea for the senior staff every morning. He had befriended Belinda, the spherical matriarch of the Department’s kitchen, and had contributed his own special blend of herbal tea. Every morning he had wasted at least an hour of the government’s time brewing the stuff and then delivering it with a big smile and evangelical positivity. When I had ‘come aboard’ as Fehrson liked to say, I had not responded well to Dirk’s efforts to bring his cup of herbal Rooibos into my poky office with its stench from the sewerage pipes in the internal courtyard. But Dirk’s persistence, his good humour and thick-skinned resilience to my rebuttals finally won through when he realised a short black coffee a little later in the morning was more my thing. He was the kind of irritating colleague who would suggest team-building activities for the weekends and print out trite quotes to stick up on the wall to make us all feel more positive about each other. I spent a good deal of my time trying to drum the foolish notion that he wanted a ‘piece of the action’ out of him. He called me old and cynical and laughed like a donkey, and I called him young and stupid, which he was.

  “You gave Dirk an active mission? Not controlling someone, but going in there himself? Field work?”

  “He was uniquely suited to it,” said Fehrson. “And it was not ‘field work’ in the way you would have it, Ben. You have a tendency to exaggerate these things. You know you do; it is what those special forces did to you. Old school friend of his, rekindle an old friendship, that is all it was.”

  “The old school friend was also in the church?”

  Khanyi opened her buff folder and paged through her photos. She found a printed list of names and placed it on the table like she was playing a trump card.

  “He was not,” she said finally, as if she had only just discovered this fact.

  “I will have another one of those, if I may, young Ben,” said Fehrson, whose familiar English gentleman mantle was returning the further we travelled from the town of Minhoop.

  I poured Fehrson another generous measure under Khanyi’s disapproving eye.

  “Dirk died in the church, but his old school friend didn’t? But Dirk was there because of the old school friend?”

  “Ostensibly,” said Khanyi. “They’d been getting reacquainted over the past several months. It wasn’t mission critical stuff. Dirk was making the opening overtures, meeting up with the friend, bumping into him by accident.”

  “Why him?” I asked, helping myself to a little of the whisky. “Why that school friend?”

  “There were whispers,” said Khanyi. “Stories that were dismissed by the big teams. We were trawling through the offcuts and this one popped up. It was only a rumour.”

  “You know how I like the rumours,” said Fehrson. I did know. I’d been subjected to countless lectures on the subject of how the real security dangers were the ones disregarded because they were thought to be insignificant. They were Fehrson’s favourites.

  “What kind of rumour?” I asked.

  “Farmers stockpiling weapons,” said Khanyi. “Building their own army. Planning to find their own solutions to the land grabs. Start their own civil war and fight for their land. That kind of thing.”

  “And someone took offence? Decided to end the war before it started? Is that why those thirty-three people died?”

  “Perhaps,” said Fehrson, and he turned to look out at the white carpet of cloud. “Our working hypothesis is that one of the locals took exception to the military activities of members of that community and decided to put a stop to them.”

  “By attacking the church? Why not attack them on their farms?”

  “If the rumours about the number of weapons on those farms are true, they are too heavily guarded. The church would be a place where they are vulnerable, where they leave their weapons at the door. And the place they all come together. Saves driving around the countryside and taking them out one at a time.”

  “Did Dirk’s friend confirm the rumours?”

  “To some extent. The friend is setting up his own quasi-militant group and building a stash of weapons. Khanyi had better explain.”

  “There is an organisation called the Suidlanders,” said Khanyi.

  “South-landers,” interpreted Fehrson, stubbornly refusing to believe I could speak any Afrikaans. “Or people from the south, if you prefer. People of the south might be better: there is an implication of belonging to the land and vice versa.”

  “They’re an official group,” said Khanyi. “Established under the Geneva Convention.”

  “Lawfully constituted,” said Fehrson. Then he caught Khanyi’s look of irritation and silenced himself with some whisky.

  “In other words, they are legitimate,” said Khanyi. “But they skirt the edge of the law. They are preparing for civil war and make no secret of it. There was an Afrikaans prophet who spoke of a civil war in South Africa, and they are preparing for it.”

  Fehrson took advantage of a slight pause to elaborate. “Siener van Rensburg,” he said. “Siener for seer.”

  “He foretold a civil war in South Africa,” Khanyi continued, “that would go beyond our borders and trigger the start of the Third World War.”

  “I see,” I said. “Interesting stuff.”

  “Interesting, but incendiary. The Suidlanders are using their interpretation of the old prophecies to fuel the flames of the fire they’re starting.”

  “And Dirk’s friend is a member of the Suidlanders?”

  “Dirk’s friend was inspired by the Suidlanders to form his own group. They seemed at first to be less of a threat. Dirk’s friend is a bit of a showman.”

  “On the other hand, these smaller groups can be dangerous,” said Fehrson. “Underground, no lawful constitution or Geneva Convention.”

  “Dirk was invited into his friend’s group. They call themselves the ‘White Africans’. Their intention is to pick up where the Suidlanders can go no further. Dirk was being welcomed into the fold. But then this happened.”

  “You think someone in that little town got angry about the White Africans and did something about them?”

  “Perhaps,” said Khanyi. “Except that none of the victims were members of the White Africans. As far as we can tell. At the moment, all that we have is a lot of questions, and very few answers.”

  “But you do know that Dirk was there and the friend was not.”

  “Neither the friend nor the friend’s father were in the church.”

  “Was that unusual? Maybe they had nothing to confess to, so they gave it a skip.”

  “That’s not why people go to church, Gabriel,” said Khanyi sternly. “The Dutch Reformed Church is about community and their relationship with God. These people are pillars of that community. They don’t miss the Sunday morning service without good reason.”

  “So it was no coincidence they weren’t there?”

  “We are not drawing conclusions,” said Fehrson. “Not yet. Let us just stick to
the facts.”

  “Which are that Dirk was in the early stages of befriending members of the Minhoop community,” said Khanyi. “People who are possibly forming their own private army. Yesterday many of that community were killed, including our Dirk. The people he was developing a relationship with were not present. Those are the facts.”

  “None of which explains today’s charade. You’re surely not going to send me in to continue Dirk’s work? You must have twenty Afrikaners who would fit the part better than me.”

  “You have an unconventional approach,” said Fehrson.

  I didn’t draw attention to the irony of that comment. I didn’t need to because the silence in the cabin did it for me. ‘Unconventional’ might be Fehrson’s new euphemism, but we all knew that he had previously described my approach as ‘downright criminal’ and ‘brazenly outside the law’. He was fond of saying that he blamed my military experience, but regardless of where the blame lay, it was why he had decided that I would never work for the Department again.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “It’s blown up in your faces, hasn’t it?”

  Khanyi looked to Fehrson for the answer to that.

  “Not blown up. No, no. Not exactly.”

  Which clearly meant that it had.

  “What happened? Did Dirk get confused about which side he was on? Did he break down and confess all to his school buddy?”

  “Dirk did nothing wrong,” said Khanyi. “There was a fight. A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Youthful exuberance,” said Fehrson. “Nothing more.”

  “Dirk was hospitalised. Questions were asked. We were suspended.”

  “We?”

  “The Department,” said Khanyi. “The Department is under investigation.”