by Deon Meyer
Nothing happened.
I made sure the safety was off. Then I remembered that it was a sniper’s weapon. It had a two-stage trigger.
I took aim again, breathed in and out, pulled the trigger, pulled again and the shot boomed. I swung the barrel towards the other, he was moving, looking at his partner. I shot him; saw him jerk.
Then it was quiet.
‘Who shot now?’ Eric’s voice.
The last two. I wasn’t sure where they were. I suspected that they would be covering the eastern front, somewhere beyond the leafy tunnel where I had talked to Donnie Branca. I got up and began to jog from dark spot to dark spot.
‘Dave, come in, Dave, who was that shooting? Did you see anything?’
‘Eric, can you hear me?’ I said.
‘Who the fuck is that?’
‘My name is Lemmer and I’m watching you through the night sight of a Galil.’
I had to talk to him, a talking man can’t hear.
He wouldn’t talk.
‘You’re the only one left, Eric. Now tell me why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Information.’
I couldn’t see them. I was on the two-wheel track between the house and the gate. I swung the scope from left to right, slowly, but I couldn’t see them. Farther east? Could be.
‘What kind of information?’
‘I’ve only got two questions. But think carefully before you answer, because you only have one chance.’
‘I’m listening.’
I knew what he was up to. He would gesture to his partner, look here, look there. Their eyes would search for me. Their adrenalin would be pumping; they would be ready to shoot.
‘Put down your weapons.’
I couldn’t keep up searching for them. If they saw me, any movement at all, they would know I was lying.
‘I said, put down your weapons.’
‘OK.’
‘Now get up.’
I couldn’t see anything. They were closer to the gate than I thought.
‘Both of you.’
I waited, stretching out the silence.
‘Now what?’ asked Eric.
‘Walk towards the road.’
‘Which road?’
‘The road to the house.’
‘OK.’
But I saw nothing.
Did they know I was bluffing?
I still couldn’t see a thing.
Then I saw the movement, far down the road.
‘We’re at the road.’
‘Walk towards the house.’
They approached, still too far away to recognise in the dark.
‘Eric, put your hands on your head.’
Both figures did that.
‘No, not both of you. Just Eric’
One of them dropped his hands. I let them come within a hundred metres of me, then aimed at the upper thigh of the one who was not Eric. I shot and he dropped.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Lie down next to him.’
‘Shit, Eric, my leg!’
I ran through the trees beside the road, closer to them.
The other man moaned about his leg. Fifty metres, then I dropped flat at the edge of the trees and took aim.
‘Eric, I’m going to bleed to death.’
‘Shut up, Kappies.’
I could see them clearly. Eric lay beside Kappies.
‘You’d better help him,’ I said.
Eric sat up. He just looked at his partner.
‘Help me, Eric’
Eric grabbed at his waist. For a second I thought he was going for a gun, but then I saw him taking off his belt.
‘Jissis, Kappies,’ and he strapped the belt around his leg.
‘It’s not working.’ Kappies voice was panic stricken.
‘Lie fucking still, I’m doing what I can.’ Eric took his shirt off and ripped it. ‘I’m not a fucking doctor.’
Feverishly, he wound the cloth strips around the wound.
‘That’s all I can do.’
Kappies just groaned.
‘Time for answers,’ I said.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’ve got just two questions. Answer quickly. If you take too long, I’ll shoot him again. In the other leg this time. If you lie to me, I’ll shoot you.’
‘Please,’ begged Kappies.
‘Ask what you want to ask.’
‘I will count to three. If you don’t answer, I’ll shoot him. It’s in your hands.’
‘Ask.’
‘Right. Question one: who do you work for?’
He didn’t answer straight away. ‘One.’
‘Jissis, Eric’
‘Two.’
It was Kappies who shouted, ‘Es Cee Ay.’
‘What?’
‘Southern Cross Avionics,’ shouted Kappies.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Now, question two: who gave the order to kill Emma le Roux?’
‘What do you mean?’
Eric was trying to gain time. I fired, deliberately aiming just next to Kappies’ foot. He screamed in terror.
‘Please, please, it was Eric!’
‘Jissis, Kappies.’
‘It was, Eric, you fucking know it.’
‘Listen,’ said Eric in a rush and looking in my direction. ‘The order came from the top.’
‘Who gave it?’
‘Tell him, Eric’
‘One,’ I counted.
Silence.
‘Two.’
‘Shit, Eric, tell him.’
‘Wernich.’
‘Who is Wernich?’
‘Quintus Wernich. He’s the chairman.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of the board.’
‘Where is he?’
‘You said two questions.’
‘I lied.’
Kappies moaned again.
‘Where is he?’
‘He lives in Stellenbosch,’ Kappies yelled. ‘We don’t have his address.’
‘Who were the three that attacked Emma in Cape Town?’
‘Kappies, keep quiet.’
‘It was Eric and Vannie and Frans.’
‘Fuck it, Kappies, I should have let you bleed to death, you coward.’
‘And who attacked us, at the road?’
‘They did. Those three.’
‘Was it you lot who threw Frank Wolhuter in the lion camp?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were there too, Kappies.’
‘I sat in the Jeep, I swear.’
‘What did you get from Wolhuter? What did he want to show Emma?’
‘A picture.’
‘What picture?’
‘An old photo. Of Cobie and Emma, when he was still in the army.’
‘Did you torture Edwin Dibakwane?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The gate guard from Mohlolobe.’
‘We were all there. Kappies too.’
‘But Eric put the snake in your house.’
Bosom buddies, obviously.
‘What were you doing with the Jeep in the hospital car park the other day?’
‘We wanted to put a GPS sensor on your car, but you came out.’
‘How did you know which one was my car?’
‘We hacked into Budget’s computer system.’
‘There was a GPS thing on Emma’s car.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you wait so long before you attacked us?’
‘We didn’t think she would find anything,’ said Eric.
‘Then she got the letter.’
‘Yes.’
I got up slowly. I left the Galil on the ground.
‘You can get up now, Eric,’ I said.
‘You’ll shoot me.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to shoot you.’
Cobie told me the last part of his story under the thorn tree at Heuningklip. He spoke in a monotone, hoarse and weary. So
metimes he had to stop to control his emotions. Then he would just sit there with drooping shoulders and his head on his chest and slowly breathe in and out to gather his strength.
‘I was so careful,’ he said. ‘Not just about their safety. I knew what it must have been like for them. For my mother thinking I was dead all these years and then suddenly I’m not. It would have …’
He took four or five breaths before he spoke again.
‘I didn’t want to phone. I didn’t know if they were still listening after all these years. So I thought I should first go to my father at work. I arrived there and asked to see him, but they said he wasn’t there, he was on holiday and there were no vacancies anyway.
‘So I said I wasn’t looking for work, I was family. So she looked at me and said “Family?” as though I were lying. I asked her when they were coming back and she said in two weeks. So I asked her where they were and she said that was private. So I said, if I leave a message, would they phone him, so she said, mister, he’s on holiday, we don’t bother him.
‘So I asked, is Alta here, and she said who and I said Alta Blomerus and she said nobody like that works here.
‘I said she was Mr le Roux’s secretary and she said Mr le Roux’s secretary has been Mrs Davel for the last five years now. Then she excused herself, said she had to answer the phones and that Mr le Roux would be back in two weeks.
‘I asked, but is he at home, and she was in a hurry and she said no, they are not at home, excuse me, mister. And then I didn’t know what to do, so I turned around and left. Then I went and did a stupid, stupid thing.’
He had taken a room in a guest house in Randburg, only a few kilometres from his family home, and lay all afternoon on the bed thinking. Then he got up and called the house number just to see whether they were there.
His mother’s voice was on the answering machine. ‘We can’t take your call. Try us on the cell. The number is …’ He had put the phone down and sat shaking on the bed because he heard his mother’s voice for the first time in decades and it sounded just the same, exactly the same, as if he had last seen her the day before.
Then he phoned again and listened. And again and again, until he knew the cell phone number by heart. The urge grew and he began to think about cell phones, that they couldn’t tap a cell phone because it had no wires and there was no space for bugs. If he was careful, if he just asked where they were, it would be safe. He would pretend to be someone else.
‘I didn’t sleep. All night long I just thought about what I would say. I had everything ready. I looked in the Yellow Pages for the name of a company, a steel dealer, and I thought I would say that I was Van der Merwe of Benoni Steel and that I’d like to talk to him because I wanted to do business with him and then ask when he would be back.
‘I phoned at nine the next morning and my mother answered. She said, “Sara le Roux speaking, good morning.” I wanted to cry, I wanted to say, “Hello, ma, it’s me, ma.” She said, “Hello?” and I said, “Good morning, madam, may I speak to Johan le Roux, please.” She didn’t say anything and I said, “Hello? Mrs le Roux?”
‘Then my mother said, “Dear God, Jacobus,” and it gave me a fright. I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to cry. My mother, she recognised my voice after eleven years. She knew it was me. Then I cried, I couldn’t help it and I said, “Ma,” and she said, “My son, oh God, my son.”
‘But then I was terribly afraid and I turned off the phone and grabbed my things and I walked out.
‘The next afternoon I bought myself a cell phone and phoned her again. It wasn’t her that answered, it was the police in Willowmore. They said, “We’re very sorry, sir, Mrs le Roux is dead, she and Mr le Roux, here in the Perdepoort on the N9.”’
45
I knew guys like Eric.
They came from the grey mass of the middle class, always bigger and stronger than the rest. At school they were trapped in the no man’s land between the in-groups of the brainy kids and the jocks. The only way out, the way to be noticed and respected, was through physical intimidation. These were the ingredients in the making of a bully.
Instinctively, they knew this strategy wouldn’t work in the adult world. Instead, they would join the police or the army, where a uniform would compensate. There they discovered the Power of the Gun and became addicted to it. But the salary, the working conditions, the lack of advancement through the ranks and the constant reminders that they were still middle class left them frustrated and dissatisfied. After four or five years they would seek out opportunities in the private sector, but they would never give up telling their stories – about how rough and ready they had been in the force. You had to know how fearless they were, how tough and strong, how many guys they had beaten up and how many they had shot.
They believed their own reputation, because in groups of five or six they could assault women, torture black gate guards and fling middle-aged conservationists into lion pens. They were afraid of nothing, hard men of violence.
But take away their guns and they are nothing.
I went to meet him on the road. Big sturdy guy. I hit him in the face. He dropped and got up again.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said, full of bravado. He lifted his fists, dropped his head and looked at me from under his eyebrows. He pecked with a right. I grabbed his fist, dragged him forward and smacked him across the face with the back of my hand.
He didn’t want to show he was humiliated. He danced away, a poor parody of light-footed courage.
He came at me again, more wary this time. Two, three lefts at my body. I let him hit, the blows weren’t debilitating. They gave him confidence. The next one would be a right, the aspiring knockout blow, the one he would swing from below his shoulder.
His balance wasn’t bad, he knew better than to telegraph with his eyes – somewhere in his youth were a few years of boxing. He struck and I let it pass left of my head and then I went away to another world, the other place. Where time stood still. Where everything disappeared, you heard nothing and saw just red-grey mist. And this thing in front of you that you lusted to destroy with all the powers within you.
I fetched the Jeep and dragged Kappies and Eric into the vehicle and dumped them off at the house. I tied each one to a bed with baling wire that I found in the back of the Prado, between more sophisticated equipment. There were radio receivers and unidentifiable electronic boxes with LED screens and switches, laptops, earphones, microphones and antennae, extension cords and tools. I wondered whether this was the stuff they used to listen in on the calls. One carton was labelled GPS Tracking.
I checked Kappies’ wound once I had tied him securely. He would live. He wouldn’t win the Comrades marathon, though. He stared at me wordlessly with frightened eyes.
Whether Eric would make it, I didn’t know. I really didn’t care.
Then I took off my bloodstained clothes and had a bath.
I took my sports bag and drove the Jeep to the forestry station, left it there and took the Nissan. Just after midnight, I drove to Nelspruit.
In the SouthMed Hospital car park I phoned Jeanette Louw first. She must have been asleep, but she disguised it well.
‘I got them,’ I said.
‘Got them?’
‘Four are dead. Two are in a bad way.’
‘Jesus, Lemmer.’
‘It’s not over yet, Jeanette. I have to go to the Cape tomorrow.’
‘What’s in the Cape?
‘I want the address of a Quintus Wernich, chairman of the board of Southern Cross Avionics. He lives in Stellenbosch.’ Jeanette Louw said, ‘Fuck.’
‘You know him?’
‘Jesus. He’s part of this?’
‘Jeanette, I haven’t got time now. I’ll tell you everything, but not now. You know Wernich.’
‘I met him when I made a presentation of our services to Southern Cross. After all that trouble the bastard said no thanks, they had their own people.’
‘Not any more, I don’t t
hink. What else?’
‘I knew all about them before I talked to them, but that was months ago. Let me think … If I remember correctly, they made their name with new systems for the Mirage, the fighter plane. I still have the stuff here somewhere. I’ll take a look.’
‘Can you get Wernich’s address? And book a flight for me?’
‘I will.’ Then she asked sharply, ‘When did you last sleep?’
‘I can’t remember. Day before yesterday; something like that. I’m at the hospital. I’ll have a quick nap now.’
‘Good idea. Listen, you wanted to know about Stef Moller.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me just get my notes. You must understand, what I found is mostly speculative. You won’t be able to prove it.’
‘I don’t want proof. He’s out of the picture, anyway.’
‘So, for what it’s worth, have you ever heard of Frama Inter-Trading?’
‘Never.’
‘I won’t bore you with details, but in the seventies and eighties the army was smuggling ivory and Frama was the front company. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of rands. In 1996 the Kumleben Commission investigated the whole business and their report said that there was possible corruption and self-enrichment on a grand scale. But as you can guess, no one wanted to point fingers. One of the names mentioned was a Stefanus Lodewikus Moller. He was Frama’s auditor. He was the one that moved the money around.’
I was too exhausted to digest all that.
‘Are you there?’ Jeanette asked.
‘I’m dumbstruck.’
‘Yes, Lemmer. This fucking country. But you go and sleep your sleep, I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Jeanette.’
‘Before I forget,’ she said urgently.
‘What?’
‘You can’t take the Glock on the plane.’
‘Oh, yes. I hadn’t thought that far.’
‘Leave it with B. J. Fikter. I’ll get something for you at this end.’
I picked up my bag and went into the hospital. B. J. Fikter was on night shift. He looked fresh and alert and he took his hand off his firearm when he saw that it was me. The police constable was fast asleep opposite him.
‘Ah, how pretty you look, my dear,’ he said.
‘And I haven’t even put my make-up on yet. Any news?’
He shook his head.
