“You’re on company time now,” said Chandler. “Until we get our little stash of yellow metal into this warehouse, it’s going to have to be full focus.”
“Why this warehouse?” asked Fat-Boy, as if he’d been storing that question up for some time.
“Because my man will take delivery at sea.”
“I don’t do sea,” said Fat-Boy.
Chandler smiled grimly at Fat-Boy.
“You might find that eight million yankees help you overlook that shortcoming.”
“Seven million, seven hundred and sixty-five thousand, four hundred and eighty-nine,” said Fat-Boy, and he pushed his lower lip forward and blew out his cheeks to indicate that he considered it unlikely that would enable him to overlook anything. “Each. If we divide by four.” Then, as Chandler struggled to find words, he added, “Give or take.”
“Eight million between friends,” said Chandler. But Fat-Boy wasn’t going to let him get away with such gross inaccuracy.
“You said he was giving you fifty cents on the dollar,” he protested. “We’ve got a hundred and twenty bars. That’s seven million, seven …”
“I understand,” interrupted Chandler, with a hand raised to stop the flow of numbers. “Nevertheless, a reluctance to climb aboard a boat pales beside that kind of figure, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Not for me, it don’t. I don’t do sea,” repeated Fat-Boy, and he turned to me for backup.
“I’ll do sea for that,” I admitted. “I’d probably do sea for a lot less.”
Fat-Boy made a sound with his lips, like he was warming up for a trumpet recital.
“That’s ‘cos you’ll do anything to prove what a fucking military hero you are,” he said. “While you were polishing your medals, I was being called a non-swimmer, that’s why.” It irritated Fat-Boy that I had a shared past with Chandler, and he loved to poke at it and see what kind of reaction he could get. It was usually a negative one. He knew nothing of my military career, as he liked to demonstrate by ridiculing it. The idea of describing anything I did as heroic was amusing enough. But the suggestion that I’d earned any medals was ludicrous.
“You were never called a non-swimmer,” I said. “Those kinds of insults went out with the dark ages.”
“Was too.” Fat-Boy stuck out his lower lip again. “They never taught us blacks to swim. Called us non-swimmers.”
Chandler took a deep breath, and I felt a momentary pang of sympathy. Not only were we a bunch of misfits, there was a distinct paucity of sense between us. Mind you, I could trace much of that directly back to our leader.
“Except that we don’t have a hundred and twenty bars,” said Robyn before Chandler could use the breath he had taken. We all turned to her. When Robyn’s in a bad mood, it’s as if her skin turns to marble and her eyes glow like coals in a dying fire.
“I counted them,” said Fat-Boy, who was not intimidated by the eyes.
“We don’t have a single bar,” said Robyn.
“What Robyn means,” said Chandler, who liked to bring these meetings to order before the children started throwing things, “is that we don’t have the bars in our possession.”
“Logistical,” said Fat-Boy, who might have had a similar briefing to my own.
“There is a plan then?” asked Robyn.
“There is indeed,” said Chandler. He waited a moment for the applause to die down. “The Angel has an idea.”
“Angel?” scoffed Fat-Boy and gave me a glare. “I’m not doing any plan of the Angel. It’s him that got us into this trouble.”
“That’s not entirely true,” said Chandler.
“Is too,” said Fat-Boy. “He didn’t shoot straight. It was his job to kill that man, not shoot his leg off. If he hadn’t done that we’d be on the beach living the good life by now.”
Chandler sighed.
“We’ve discussed this, Fat-Boy. You know that is rubbish. Killing Breytenbach was never a part of the plan.”
“But whose side is Angel on? What’s the bet his new idea is something he wants us to do for those government pigs? He’s just a yes-man to them, that’s all he is.”
“The Angel is on our side,” said Chandler. But he said it without conviction, and we all heard it. “Here is the plan: we collect our shiny yellow bars from BB’s kind protection.” A satisfied look to remind us it was his idea to leave our bounty hiding in plain sight. “We then use Angel’s idea to bring said bars down to Cape Town, store them here temporarily, then take them out to sea when the time is right.”
“Get them here how?” said Robyn.
“Shall we hear the Angel’s idea?” said Chandler in a voice that was beginning to fray around the edges.
“We’ll never get through all the roadblocks,” said Robyn. “That’s why there’s been this delay. How do we explain the heavy boxes we don’t want them to open? Do you know how many road blocks there are between Mpumalanga and here? And what about getting them into the docks? The security has been beefed up at all the ports. You know that.”
“If we give the Angel a chance to speak,” said Chandler, his enthusiasm flagging a little against Robyn’s persistent headwind.
I cleared my throat, but Fat-Boy jumped in.
“Tell me you’re not working with those lousy government pigs,” he demanded.
“They have approached me,” I said. “And asked me to work with them. But this has nothing to do with them, except for an opportunity that it might provide.”
Fat-Boy glowered at me through his lazy eye, then turned to Chandler. “I won’t be the grovelling slave no more, colonel. The black guy in the dirty overalls getting kicked around by all you privileged whities.”
“You won’t be, Fat-Boy.”
“I wanna be the main player.”
Chandler took a deep breath, produced a reassuring smile for Fat-Boy, and turned to me.
“Robyn is correct,” I said. “Moving the gold has been impossible under the state of emergency. But there is one group of people who can move anything they like. Who are immune to the roadblocks.”
“No one’s immune,” said Fat-Boy. “They stop everyone.”
“You mean the army,” said Robyn. “They are immune.”
“I do. When the army needs to transport something, no one takes a second look at it.”
“Not even Breytenbach,” agreed Robyn.
Fat-Boy made his trumpet sound again. “You saying we get the army to transport our gold?”
“I am.”
“How the fuck do we do that?”
“By asking them,” I said.
We found some broken deckchairs and old cans of paint to sit on, and I told them about the Van Rensburg family. About the playboy Hendrik who was starting his own army, and his father, Piet, who had the government in his pocket.
“You want this man Piet to ask the army to load our gold onto their trucks?” asked Fat-Boy.
“Onto a ship,” I said. “Trucks are vulnerable. Too many stops while the drivers drink coffee and the truck sits outside in the rain waiting for someone to look inside.”
“Why would this man Piet do this for us?”
“Because he’s done it before.”
“Asked the army to move gold bars for him?”
“Not gold bars. Animals.”
“The army moved animals for him?” said Fat-Boy. “That’s insane.”
“Not insane at all. Van Rensburg’s licence to keep carnivorous animals on his game farm has recently been restored. He has a collection of hungry carnivores waiting to be shipped down here. He encountered the same logistical problems as us, so he went to the government and asked them to give him a rubber stamp and get the army to expedite his transport.”
“They did that?” asked Robyn.
“First shipment arrived a few weeks ago.”
“But animals is one thing. Gold is another,” said Fat-Boy.
“Exactly. But they use specially modified crates. It turns out that the animals are not the only th
ing they are transporting.”
“Do you have to talk in riddles, Angel?” asked Fat-Boy. “It’s annoying.”
I explained the report that Dirk had written that suggested that the large crates used to transport wildlife to the Van Rensburg farm as it transitioned from sheep farm into game farm had been used to smuggle weapons for Hendrik’s stash.
“But if they’re smuggling weapons,” said Robyn, “why does the army allow it?”
“They don’t know about it. Only a few people saw the report.”
“But they’ll stop it now. His next load won’t get through.”
“On the contrary, the next load won’t even be looked at by the customs inspectors. They’ll wave it through.”
“Why?” asked Robyn.
“Because they don’t know where they’re stashing the weapons. They want them to bring more in so they can follow them.”
“Track them,” said Fat-Boy.
“All the way to the secret stash.”
“How do they know there will be another load?” asked Chandler. He was sitting on an old paint can but leaning forward and taking his weight on his legs as if he was about to spring into action.
“It’s possible the Minhoop tragedy was a direct attack on the Van Rensburg’s private army,” I said. “Piet van Rensburg made a call yesterday to a man called Richard Mabele.”
“Arms dealer,” said Chandler. “He wants more weapons.”
“Looks like it.”
“It’s a family business? Not just the playboy son collecting weapons?”
“That’s what my government goons think.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Fat-Boy. “How does this help us?”
“The number Piet van Rensburg called is not Richard Mabele’s real number.”
“So?”
Chandler turned to Fat-Boy. “How much does our gold weigh?”
“Two point one-six metric tons.”
“Hardly anything. You know why they call them heavy armaments? We’ll add our two tons of gold in with the heavy armaments and nobody will notice.”
“We don’t have heavy armaments,” protested Fat-Boy.
Chandler smiled. “We’ll find some.”
“But if we provide the weapons,” said Robyn, “what’s to stop the customs inspectors? They won’t wave them through if it isn’t an official thing.”
“That’s why we need an inside man,” said Chandler. “Someone working with the government goons.” He turned to me. “You accepted their job offer, Angel?”
“Not yet.”
“What about when we load the gold?” said Robyn. “They’ll stop us then.”
“We need to do it out of the country. Drive to Mozambique, load it up in Maputo.”
Robyn could think of no further objections.
“I don’t do wild animals,” said Fat-Boy suddenly.
We all turned to look at him.
“I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen, colonel,” he said. “The black guy here is gonna be putting his life on the line in those cages with the man-eating lions, BB will get the gold back, and squeaky-clean Angel will get himself a medal from the government. That’s what’s gonna happen.”
“The black guy won’t be putting his life on the line,” said Chandler. “The black guy is going to be the main player in this one. Top dog, man of the match.”
“Yes?” said Fat-Boy suspiciously.
“What do you know about Richard Mabele?” I asked.
Fat-Boy shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Biggest smuggler on the continent. He does everything from cigarettes to arms.”
“So?”
“Mabele,” I said. “He’s Xhosa.”
Fat-Boy’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to pretend to be him?”
“Not him, someone close to him, a nephew or brother perhaps.”
“The main player?” said Fat-Boy.
“The main player,” I confirmed.
Fat-Boy pretended to consider this for a moment. “Yebo,” he said eventually, and gave a smug smile. “A Xhosa smuggler – I can do that.”
After Chandler had patted me on the back and Fat-Boy had engaged in a reluctant handshake that included several new and mystifying grasps, Robyn turned her back to me and said that she would be going to sleep early and would find somewhere else to stay in the morning, no matter what the colonel had to say about it. I opened the big doors at the far end of the warehouse. I lit myself a French cigarette and gazed out over the oily black water that lapped gently up the ramp. Patches of rain moved across the black sea like someone was twiddling the translucency knob. Trembling lights of ships lying outside the docks appeared and were then coyly hidden away again. Khanyi answered on the third ring.
“Why is it that whenever a new number appears on my screen, I know it’s you?” she said in her late-night DJ voice.
“Because I’m the only person who ever calls?” I suggested. Khanyi had a reputation for rejecting all attempts at social interaction, a stricture which had heightened her level of mysterious appeal for the many awkward males who loitered about the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of her toned physique as she moved between meeting rooms.
She sighed.
“Why can’t you be like everyone else?”
“In what way?”
“Be normal. Just stick to one phone number. It’s what most people do.” But Khanyi did not want our conversation to become derailed by a discussion of my abnormality or her level of social interaction. She brightened her voice. “You’ve had a chance to go through the file?”
“All the way to the last page.”
“Father said you would have turned us down,” she said defensively. “He said you’d never agree to do anything for us unless we gave you something in return.”
“That pink highlighter smudged the number. It’s illegible.”
“That’s a shame,” she said. “But it’s just a copy. I have the original.”
“It will take you some time to find the original?”
“It might,” she admitted.
“Enough time for me to do what?”
“Get to know Hendrik van Rensburg a little. And his father. Bond with them. Find a link between what happened yesterday and the Van Rensburgs’ White Africans. We know they’re connected. The sooner the police know, the better for us all.”
“You want me to ask whether they knew the man with an automatic weapon who wandered into their church to kill thirty of their friendly neighbours?”
“Why must you always take that tone, Gabriel?”
“What you’re doing is bribery, you know that. I’m delighted for you that you’re taking charge of the Department. But this little game of yours is dirty.”
Khanyi was silent for a moment. I could hear her steady breath on the microphone. We didn’t talk like this to each other, and she needed a moment to adjust.
“This whole thing might be a dreadful chain of coincidences,” she said. “But what if it isn’t, Gabriel? What if Minhoop happens again?”
I took a final draw on the cigarette and blew the smoke towards the sea.
“The last page was Father’s idea,” she said.
“Whereas you thought I’d agree to get involved in this farce just because you took me for a ride in an aeroplane and showed me the bloodstains?”
“I didn’t think it. I knew you would. I know you better than you realise, Gabriel.” She paused to give me an opportunity to deny this. I didn’t. I finished the cigarette. “Dirk worshipped the ground you walked on,” she said. “I knew that would be enough. You’re more human than you like people to think. But Father insisted. He said that sometimes your humanity needs a little push.”
I fired up another cigarette.
“I thought you’d quit,” she said as I exhaled.
“So did I,” I said. “That day I walked out of the Warehouse with my box of belongings. The day Fehrson realised I was not employable.”
“We’ll cover expenses and I’m
sure there will be reimbursement,” said Khanyi. “But I know it’s not the money you care about.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Khanyi. That’s all I care about.”
Khanyi laughed, told me I was keeping her up and then yawned to prove it. She welcomed me back to the Department and ended the call.
Long after Khanyi would have dropped into a dreamless, nightmare-free sleep, I was still gazing out over the black ink of the sea, wondering whether being a successful businessman and a white supremacist were mutually exclusive activities. Or what about being the playboy son of a millionaire?
And even if one of them was a white supremacist, could that have been the reason for the massacre of thirty-three worshippers? Had someone decided that they could crush Hendrik van Rensburg’s group of White Africans by removing everyone in that church? Had they failed because neither of the Van Rensburgs had been there? Or was that all a part of the plan?
The rain cleared, and the shrouds were lifted from the sea to reveal the heavy tankers and cargo ships making their way along the shipping lanes, a string of bright clear lights reaching to the horizon. Fluttering between them were the blue lights of the military inspection ships. It was hard to imagine why the inspection of cargo ships contributed to the increased stability of our fragile country, but I supposed that is what happens when private enterprise gets involved in political matters.
Six
My decision to live in South Africa had been a spontaneous one, made when I awoke one morning shortly after throwing the pills in the faces of the psychologists and walking out of the medical rehabilitation centre in Surrey. I’d awoken with a memory of my mother floating at the edge of my dreams. She had been a seventh-generation Afrikaner, originally of German descent. Beautiful and kind, she was a little rough around the edges. She told me stories of her childhood, and later, after her death, when I spent time in Cape Town on breaks between active duty on the mines, it felt strangely like returning home. Strange because I had grown up in the United Kingdom, where my Canadian diplomat father had taken his South African bride when his posting was changed. England had been my home, although my father told me I was Canadian, and my mother would whisper that she knew where my home truly was; that we would return there one day, and that I would know it too. But we didn’t return together. England was where she had died. Her slow, miserable, cancerous death.
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