by Deon Meyer
His pipe had gone out. He struck another match, but it never reached the pipe. ‘These are the same people that want a piece of Kruger, because their great-great-grandfather had three cows that grazed there in seventeen-something. Give it to them and see what happens. Chop up the park in forty bits of tribal land and that’s the end, I’m telling you, we can all pack our bags and move to Australia, there’ll be nothing left here anyway.’
He leaned back in his chair. ‘And it’s not just the blacks. Greed has no colour.’
He jabbed his pipe stem at me. ‘That’s why I get edgy when a man comes in here and says he’s a builder. There are a lot of them sneaking around here. White guys. Skinny little city slickers in collar and tie, with dollars signs in their eyes and “Development” on their business cards. They feel nothing for conservation. They haven’t come to uplift the disadvantaged. They come here and seduce the people. They create these visions of pots of gold at the end of the land claim rainbow. The people are so poor, they want to believe in it, they are blinded.’
‘Golf estates,’ said Donnie Branca in great distaste.
‘Picture that,’ Frank Wolhuter said, his deep voice passionate again. ‘Go and look at the Garden Route. See what the golf estates have done there. All under the banner of conservation. Show me one thing they have conserved there. Trashed, yes. Wasted. They use more water per hectare than any other kind of development in the world, and now I hear they are going to develop golf estates in the Little Karoo, because there’s no more land left on the coast. With what water, I ask you? The only water is underground and that is a finite resource, but develop they will, because the money calls. And here? A golf estate in the Kruger Park? Can you picture that? Can you see how it would ruin the fauna and flora and the water resources, here where we have a terrible drought every other year?’
‘What will be left for our children?’ Branca asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Wolhuter. ‘Except eighteen holes and a few impala beside the eighteenth green.’
Then they fell silent and the sounds of the animals in the pens filtered through the curtains like an approving audience.
Emma le Roux stared at the opposite wall for a long time before taking her ID book and putting it away in her bag. She left the visiting card on the desk. ‘Where is Jacobus now?’ she asked.
Wolhuter’s anger was spent, his voice calm.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Can you give him a message?’
‘No, I mean I don’t know where he is. Nobody knows where he is.’
‘Maybe he’s gone back to Swaziland,’ said Donnie Branca.
‘Oh?’
‘That’s where he comes from,’ said Wolhuter. ‘Are you from Swaziland too?’
‘No,’ said Emma.
Wolhuter raised his hands in a gesture that said ‘there you are, then’.
‘How long have you known Jacobus?’
‘Let’s see now … Five … no, six years.’
‘And are you sure he’s definitely from Swaziland?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Does he still have relations there?’
Wolhuter sank back into the chair. ‘Not that I know of. I sort of had the impression that he was an orphan. Donnie? Did he ever speak of his people?’
‘I don’t know. You know Cobie. Not a great talker.’
‘Where in Swaziland?’
Wolhuter shook his head. ‘Emma, you have to understand. We don’t ask people for their CVs when they come and work here. Most of them are temporary. There’s always an oversupply of volunteers. They do the tour and get all bright eyed, especially the young people and the tourists. It’s a peculiar thing; I think the churches see a lot of it. From the start I say board and lodging is on the house, but no pay. You work for the cause and we see how it goes. We need the extra hands, but they don’t last. Two months or so of sweeping bird shit out of the cages and dragging stinking carcasses out to the vulture restaurant and their eyes stop shining, the excuses begin and they move on. But not Cobie. He was here three, four days and I knew he would stay.’
‘Did you ask for a CV?’
‘For a job that pays nothing?’
‘Did he work for six years without salary?’
Wolhuter laughed. ‘Of course not. By the time we put him on the payroll, I knew him. A man’s character tells you more than a CV.’
‘Where was he before he started work here?’
‘He worked for a man near the Swazi border. Heuningrand.’
‘Heuningklip,’ said Branca. ‘Stefan Moller’s. Stef. Multimillionaire, but he does fantastic work.’
‘What sort of work?’
Wolhuter looked at Branca. ‘You know more than I do, Donnie.’
Branca shrugged. ‘There was this article in Africa Geographic… about Moller buying three or four farms beside the Songimvelo Game Reserve. Abused land, overgrazed, overcropped, eroded, scrap lying around. Moller put a lot of money in to fix it. He called it “healing the land”, or something like that. It’s a private game reserve now.’
‘Jacobus helped with that?’
‘So far as I could tell.’ Branca shrugged again. ‘Cobie’s a broad-strokes kind of guy. He just said he was there.’
‘What else did he say?’
After an uncomfortable silence it was Wolhuter who tried to explain. ‘Emma, I don’t know how you do things in Cape Town, but here we respect a man’s right to keep his business to himself. Or not. Donnie and I are different. We’re talkers. Sometimes I get sick of hearing my own stories. I was a game warden for Natal Parks Board all my life, and if you would come and sit by the fire with me tonight I would tell you stories until the sun came up. Donnie’s people are from Portuguese Mozambique, and that’s an interesting history. Donnie tells it beautifully. But Cobie’s different. He’ll sit there and if I’m telling stories about animals he’ll soak up every word. Then he asks questions about it, non-stop, to the point of rudeness. Like he wants to suck you dry, hear everything, learn everything. When we talk about other things he switches off, just gets up and goes. He’s just not interested. It took me a long time to get used to that. We all tell stories about ourselves – most of us. It’s how we tell the world who we are, or who we would like to be. But not Cobie. He doesn’t really care how people see him, or don’t see him. He lives in a narrow world … one-dimensional… and people are not part of that dimension.’
‘Cobie doesn’t like the concept of people,’ said Branca.
Emma waited for him to explain.
‘He calls humanity the greatest plague the planet has ever known. He says there are too many people, but that’s not the real problem. He says that if a man must choose between wealth and conservation, wealth will always win. We will always over-exploit, we will never be cured.’
‘That’s why we know so little about Cobie. I can tell you he grew up somewhere in Swaziland; I think his father was a farmer, because now and then he mentions a farm. I know he only has Matric. And he worked for Stef Moller before he came here. That’s all I know of his history.’
‘And there was a girlfriend,’ Branca said.
That made Emma sit up. ‘A girlfriend? Where?’
‘When he worked at Stef s. He said something once …’
‘How do I get to Stef Moller’s?’
13
The barrel of a gun changes everything.
It was quiet in the car when we drove away from Wolhuter and Branca. I pondered the way Emma le Roux had spoken just before we left. She had smoothly and expertly explained their mistake in brand positioning – no hesitant, incomplete sentences, no break in rhythm. With that lovely musical voice and the light of assurance shining in her eyes she had told them that Donnie Branca’s lecture to the public was outstanding, but it had one great failing. If they put that right the donations would increase considerably.
That got their attention right away.
She explained how branding worked, brand name positioning. E
very product represents an idea in the mind of a client, a single concept. Take vehicle manufacturers: one occupies the position of ‘safety’ – Volvo. One occupies ‘driving pleasure’ – BMW. One represents ‘reliability’ – Toyota. But no brand name can have more than one position. The human mind does not allow it. When a brand tries that, it fails, without exception.
At Mogale, she had said with knowledgeable enthusiasm, the same principle applied. Vulture rehabilitation was perfect. It was original, unique, strong, fresh, decidedly different – everything required for strong positioning. Branca’s lecture was the perfect pitch – it entertained, educated, was emotional, and spoke straight to people’s hearts. Until he mentioned the other animals, the cheetahs, wildcats, leopards and wild dogs. Then, Mogale became just another brand trying to be everything to everyone.
‘You have two choices. Give the mammal programmes another brand name, or leave them out of the lecture entirely. You make the donors soft on vultures. They sit there thinking, “How much can I give to this amazing cause?” but then you go and multiply their choices suddenly, for no reason, and they don’t know how their money will be spent. If this was my concern, I would shift the other animals out, away from the raptors, set up another centre with another name, where the lecture and the tour focus on one species only.’
On the way out I considered it confirmation of my suspicion that she was – lying is not the exact word – about the other stuff, the attack, Jacobus.
It was my job for twenty years to spot threatening behaviour in people. The best indicator of that was a break in rhythm. Someone out of step with the flow of a crowd, someone whose breathing, movement or facial musculature danced to a different tune. The rhythms of speech – everyone has their own, but when there were great and sudden changes, it meant tension and stress, the bosom buddies of the lie.
Why she should lie, and about what, I could only speculate. People have many inexplicable, complex or simple reasons to lie. Sometimes they do it simply because they can. But Emma needed a motive.
The next item to occupy my mind was the formulation of a new Lemmer Law on Animal Fanatics, but I never got that far. When we drove out of Mogale’s gate the silver Opel Astra was parked across the road, noticeably and blatantly waiting for us.
There were two men in it, a black man in the driver’s seat, a white man in the passenger’s. But it was the barrel of a rifle that got my adrenalin pumping. It was propped vertically in front of the passenger, the barrel obscuring his face. The shape of the sight and muzzle identified it as an R4.
Emma was occupied with the road map, so she didn’t see them.
The firearm is the bodyguard’s single biggest problem; the unarmed bodyguard’s greatest fear. But that wasn’t my only concern. There was the possibility that I was wrong about Emma, about the threat, about her relationship with the truth. That had to wait, however.
I turned on to the tar road and drove off. In the rear-view mirror the Astra followed. No discretion. Two hundred metres behind us. A bad sign.
I accelerated gradually. I didn’t want Emma to know yet.
The road to Klaserie was straight and wide. Beyond 130 kilometres per hour the Astra dwindled, but then it began to close the gap. Past 150 and it was still there.
‘We’ll have to go through Nelspruit to Barberton and then take the R38,’ Emma said, deep in thought. ‘That seems to be the shortest route.’ She looked up and said, ‘We’re not in that much of a hurry.’
I lifted my foot from the accelerator. I knew what I needed to know.
She looked across at me. ‘Are you OK, Lemmer?’
‘I wanted to see what the BMW could do.’
She nodded, trusting me, and began folding the map.
‘What did you think of Wolhuter and Branca?’
Even if there hadn’t been an armed threat on our heels, that would not have been my topic of choice. I didn’t like Wolhuter and company. There is a Lemmer Law that states that he who needs to say ‘I’m no racist, but…’ is one. I knew for a fact that Wolhuter and Branca hadn’t told her everything they knew and I didn’t want to be the one to break that news to her. In my humble opinion, the Mogale Rehabilitation Centre was an ecological rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic, like most green initiatives. But none of these things were important right now.
I had to deal with the Astra problem, and that meant telling her about it.
‘Emma, I’m going to have to do something and I am going to need your help.’ I kept my voice even.
‘Oh?’
‘But please, you must do exactly as I ask, without hesitation and without question. Do you understand me?’
She wasn’t stupid. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked in an anxious tone, and then she looked back. She spotted the Astra. ‘Are they following us?’
‘The other thing you must do is stay calm. Breathing helps. Breathe slowly and deeply.’
‘Lemmer, what’s going on?’
Calmly and slowly, I said, ‘Listen to me. Stay calm.’
‘I am calm.’
Arguing would be no help. ‘I know you are, but I want you to be even more calm. As calm as … as a cucumber.’ Not very original. ‘Or a tomato, or a lettuce leaf or something,’ I said, and that worked.
She laughed, short and nervously. ‘I think that’s the longest sentence you’ve spoken to me yet.’ Her anxiety had diminished. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m OK. What’s going on?’
‘The Astra has been behind us since the gate at Mogale. Don’t look back again. I’ll have to deal with it. Shaking them off isn’t an option. Opels can keep up and I don’t know the roads that well.’
‘Go to the police.’ So easy. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
‘We could, but the nearest police station is sixty kilometres away. And what would we say to them? What complaint would we have? The problem is, the passenger behind us has a rifle with him. An R4. He went to the trouble of showing it to us. That has me thinking why – and I don’t like any of the possible answers. The best thing I can do is to take the gun away from him. Then we can hear their story. But in order to do that, you must help me by doing what I ask. OK?’
Her reaction was not the one I expected.
‘Why is it that you can talk now, Lemmer?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘For two days you pretend to be this silent, stupid type with nothing to say and no conversation, and now it comes pouring out of you.’
Silent and stupid. I’ll have to suck it up.
‘There I was, crying in front of you last night, and you sat there like a brick wall.’
‘Maybe this isn’t the best time …’
‘A builder? You can tell Wolhuter, but not me?’ Bitterly.
‘Can we talk about this later?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Thank you.’
She did not react, just stared at the road.
‘There’s a filling station up ahead. We passed it this morning. If I remember correctly, there’s a café too. I’m going to stop at the petrol pumps and we’re going to get out and walk straight into the café. Not too fast, not too slow. Briskly, like people in a bit of a hurry. Right?’
‘OK.’
‘The important thing is that we must not look at the Astra. Not even glance.’
She didn’t respond.
‘Emma?’
‘I won’t look.’
‘You must wait for me in the café. Stay there until I get back. That’s very important.’
‘Why in there?’
‘Because it’s a brick building that will shield you from a bullet. It’s public. There’ll be other people around.’
She nodded. She was tense.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket. ‘Type in your number. Call your phone.’
She took it and typed the number.
‘Press “call”.’
It took a while before her phone rang.
‘You can hang up now.’
I
took my phone back and put it in my pocket.
‘I didn’t have your number.’
‘Oh.’
‘Remember the breathing. Remember the cucumber,’ I said. Then I spotted the petrol station and put on the flicker.
She didn’t look for the Astra, despite what I’m certain was a strong temptation to do so. Together, we walked up the stairs to the café and went inside. There were three customers and a short fat woman behind the counter. The place smelled like salt and vinegar.
‘Stay near the back.’ I pointed at the corner where the drink fridges stood. A stopwatch was ticking in my head.
Thirty seconds.
I looked for the back door. A white wood partition allowed access to a small kitchen where a black woman was slicing tomatoes. She looked up in surprise. I put a finger to my lips and walked past her to the wooden door that I hoped led outside. I turned the knob and it swung open.
Outside, there were four or five cars in various stages of decay or repair. Two men stood at the open bonnet of one. They heard my footsteps as I passed them on the way to the edge of the mopane forest beyond.
‘The toilet is that way,’ one of them called.
I stuck a thumb in the air, but kept on without looking back, not rushing but focused. It was oppressively hot in the bright sun.
One minute.
They must not see me from the Astra, which was all that mattered. The garage and café buildings were between us.
I reached the treeline, walked another twenty metres straight on and then looked around for the first time. The bush was dense; I was invisible. I turned ninety degrees to the right and began to run. My foot burned where the glass shard had sliced it the previous night. There wasn’t much time. Hopefully, R4 and his mate had stopped. They would consider the situation and make a decision. The logical one would be to wait a while. Four, five, six minutes, to see whether we came out. That was all the time I had.
