by Andy Maslen
‘Don’t say no to me again,’ he said in a quiet voice, before turning and leaving the room. ‘He lives.’
He left the house and climbed into his truck. The engine caught on the first twist of the key and he roared away, spattering the side of the house with grit from the spinning tyres.
He called Duckie, keeping one hand on the wheel and scanning the town for signs of the Englishman.
‘Yes, Julius.’
‘Where is he?’
‘West of town. Big Lake. He’s doing some kind of weird exercises.’
‘OK. Leave him. I’m driving out.’
‘Yes, Julius.’
Witaarde reached the lake in ten minutes. He pulled up behind a thick stand of trees and stepped down onto the earth. The red earth it was his intention, his dream, to turn white.
When he reached the lake, the Englishman was standing at the water’s edge, facing across the narrow expanse towards the national park on the far side. His arms were raised above his head, palms pressed together, and, as Witaarde watched, he lifted one foot from the ground and placed the sole against his other thigh.
Witaarde folded his arms and watched, amazed, as the Englishman held the pose for four minutes. As slowly as a chameleon stalking a moth, he crept closer. The Englishman was chanting. Nonsense words.
He came to within twenty feet of him. The Englishman’s eyes were closed, face upturned. How easy it would be to put a 9mm round in the back of his skull and leave him here, just like Klara wanted.
‘Hello, Julius.’
Witaarde started.
‘How the fuck did you do that? I was silent. I’ve been hunting out here since I was nine years old. My pappa taught me.’
‘You might want to leave off the aftershave next time, then. You’re upwind of me. I smelled you coming.’
The Englishman opened his eyes, lowered his right leg and turned round to face Witaarde.
‘How many men?’ Witaarde asked.
‘Thirty, including me.’
‘You think they’re up to it?’
‘British Army, best in the world.’
‘What unit?’
‘Mainly Royal Marines, a few SAS and the rest are Parachute Regiment.’
Witaarde felt a surge of triumph, finally back on top as far as this smooth-talking Englishman was concerned.
‘You might want to check how tough your boys really are, Gabriel,’ he said with a smirk. ‘We had a few Paras up here not so long ago training those fucking kaffirs in Bots. Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘They’re not here any more.’
‘No? Did they go back to the UK?’
The Englishman’s face was impassive. Witaarde had never been good at reading people. Now he wished he had Klara by his side.
‘Nah, man. They went to the big fucking game park in the sky, courtesy of me and my boys. We ambushed them. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. One of them was a kaffir himself, so he’s gone to the black heaven. Or better yet, they’re all down in Hell.’
He saw the Englishman’s lips tighten a fraction. Not so fucking cocky now, are you?
‘It was their time,’ the Englishman said, finally. ‘But remember, my boys would be fighting on your side. As long as the pay is good, and the action. They wouldn’t mind getting into it with some local law enforcement or kaffir soldiers.’
Witaarde nodded. Saw himself at the head of a private army. His own Boer fighters, buttressed by thirty battle-hardened Brits. And who knew, once they’d seen the paradise of the Northern Cape, he’d persuade them to stay on. Join him and Klara. Take wives, build homesteads, raise kids. Witaarde wasn’t averse to mingling blood, as long as it was all white. As white as the ivory that was paying for it all.
Standing under the boiling sun, facing the man who had just admitted killing the Paras, Gabriel had to suppress the urge to do him immediately. Witaarde was on guard. His body language showed that, and although Gabriel could try hypnosis, that would require Witaarde to be closer, off his guard and not already highly suspicious. And although he could take Witaarde’s truck, which had alerted him way before the drifting aftershave, there was every chance Witaarde would have set up a call-back with one of his men, or the redoubtable Klara. If he didn’t call in, they’d be out looking for Gabriel.
Something else was needed.
‘Any chance of a lift back to town?’ he asked. ‘If we’re going to talk terms, I’d like to get changed and get a drink.’
Witaarde spread his hands wide.
‘Sure! I don’t know what the fuck you were doing out here but it’s liable to give you sunstroke. Come on, my bakkie’s behind those trees.’
Back in New Hope, Witaarde drove straight to his house and ushered Gabriel inside.
‘Klara, we’re back,’ he yelled. ‘Coffee!’
Klara’s face was blotched red beneath her tan. She glared at Gabriel as she caught him looking. He looked away.
Once she had served them coffee and left again, Witaarde spoke.
‘I’m sorry about the rough welcome we gave you, Gabriel. But look at it from my perspective. I was well within my rights to have you shot and fed to the hogs, or the wild animals.’
Gabriel sipped the coffee. He shrugged.
‘I get it. You’re under siege here, politically if not physically. I would have done the same in your shoes.’
‘Yah, well, thanks. But now I have a different plan. How about a business partnership? You bring in your mates and don’t even worry about the guns. I know how hard it is to get them in England, let alone fly them out. Anyway, we have plenty of them over here.’
‘Hunting rifles? Shotguns?’
‘Sure,’ Witaarde said, then grinned. ‘Plus M16s, Glocks, even a couple of Vektor SS-77s. You know what they are?’
‘General purpose machine guns.’
‘That’s right. Ivory money buys all kinds of stuff if you know who to talk to.’
‘Let’s talk about money. My boys get four hundred a day a man, cash, plus rations and a place to sleep.’
‘What’s your day-rate?’ Witaarde asked, sipping his coffee.
‘No day-rate. I want a partnership.’
‘What kind of a partnership?’
‘I run your new military wing and handle relations with the White Koi in return for ten per cent of the profits.’
‘That’s a lot of money. What if I tell you to go fuck yourself and we’ll carry on the way we were?’
Gabriel smiled, enjoying his newfound role.
‘Simple. I call Mei and tell her you’re not interested. Then, one day when you’ve forgotten all about me, a Chinese-made fighter-bomber arrives in that beautiful African sky above this town and then New Hope gets a new name.’ A beat. ‘No Hope. Anyone who survives the bombing will be shot. Then we take over the whole trade. I know it sounds brutal, Julius, but it’s how they operate.’
He watched as Witaarde’s jaw worked, the muscles bunching and relaxing as if he were chewing a particularly tough piece of bushmeat.
‘Five per cent.’
‘Eight.’
‘Seven and a half.’
Gabriel smiled and held out his hand. Witaarde took it and shook it perfunctorily.
‘We could take over Yusuf’s factory, too,’ Gabriel said. ‘In time. Mei’s very keen on vertical integration.’
Witaarde smiled. An odd expression that got nowhere near his eyes, just that bow-shaped top lip curling.
‘I bet she is. I tell you what, Gabriel. How about this? Come on a hunting trip with me. We’ll go up to Bots and shoot a couple of elephants, take a chainsaw to them. I want to see whether you can handle the messy side of the business. I need to know I can trust you.’
Gabriel knew he couldn’t afford to hesitate. But shooting dead an elephant then butchering it with a chainsaw to get the tusks? Not good. Even if it meant having a chance to deal with Witaarde away from New Hope.
‘Fine. I’ll get a chance to show you what I can do with t
he Dakota.’
Witaarde grinned. Gabriel realised the man facing him entirely lacked a sense of humour. Witaarde explained he was going to fly into Botswana in the Cessna and meet Gabriel there. Ruud would be his escort and driver. And my guard.
It was fine. Witaarde was approaching his destiny. Just not the one he had planned for himself.
52
KGALAGADI TRANSFRONTIER PARK, BOTSWANA
Four hours in Ruud’s company was enough to confirm Gabriel’s opinion of the man. Leave his politics out of it, and what remained was a cold-hearted killer. He’d boasted on the four-hour drive of torturing and killing journalists, activists and government security agents. With so little regard for human life, Gabriel could see why slaughtering elephants wouldn’t raise a quiver of moral doubt from the man.
And he’d confirmed, willingly, that he’d been a member of the group of poachers, under Witaarde’s personal command, who’d murdered the Paras and the Botswana soldiers. Good enough for what was coming to him.
As they entered the park, the black guard on duty shot Ruud a look that Gabriel read as easily as a book. Complicity. He waited until the pearlescent Range Rover was a few miles inside the park.
‘That guard know you?’
‘On the payroll.’
‘So you don’t mind using the kaffirs when it suits you?’
‘Ha! Why should we? Throw them a few dollars and they’d shoot their own mothers. They’re useful, nothing more.’
Gabriel next asked the question he’d been turning over in his mind, as much a brain-teaser as a practical matter.
‘The park’s a big place. How do you know where to find the elephants?’
Ruud turned and winked.
‘Why do you think the guard knows me? They have pretty sophisticated tracking up here. A gift from one of those bleeding heart charities. You know, “Save the Elephants” or some liberal bullshit.’
‘And he tells you where to find a herd.’
‘In one, my friend. I tell you something else. The locals aren’t nearly as fond of elephants as the greenies seem to think. You know how long it takes a single bull to destroy a farmer’s yearly crop of sorghum or tomatoes?’
‘How long?’
‘One night! One, man! Then that poor kaffir is fucked three ways from Sunday.’
As they drove north, Ruud checking a discreet GPS tracker on his side of the steering wheel, Gabriel sorted through the options he’d been considering for despatching Witaarde and getting himself out of New Hope and back to the relative safety of Johannesburg.
The best option would be to shoot him and Ruud and blame their deaths on a rival poaching gang or, better yet, a patrol of Botswanan APU guys. After killing them, he intended to leave the bodies out for the scavengers, just as Witaarde had bragged he did with the dead ‘enemies’ of the Volksrepubliek van Suid-Afrika.
He’d have transport. But would the park guard want to know where Ruud was? Scrap that, he’d be behind the wheel of one of the best 4x4s in the world. Cross-country back into South Africa and avoid New Hope altogether. Now he knew he wouldn’t be acting as, what had Britta called him riddare i skinande rustning – a knight in shining armour – to Klara Witaarde, he’d be better off avoiding the place altogether.
‘You know the best place to shoot an elephant, Gabriel?’ Ruud asked, breaking into his thoughts.
‘Tell me.’
‘For a one-shot kill, you want to hit him in the brain. A heart shot is more of an insurance job. Sure, you can take one down that way, but it’s a small target in a big body.’
‘What’s the shot placement?’
‘Side-on; you want to hit him just in front of the ear-crease, where it joins the head. From the front, visualise a point halfway between the eyes. The height depends on if he’s got his head up. You ever hunt before?’
‘Only people.’
Ruud laughed, a harsh bark.
‘Ha! “Only people.” I like that. Yah, well, big game is different. You hit a man with a decent calibre round, he goes down, one way or another. Big game is different. Miss the brain or the heart, it’ll just take off. A big kudu or a hippo, you put a round in its body it just swallows it up, man.’
As Ruud talked, Gabriel tuned him out. He was thinking through the upcoming confrontation with Witaarde. He’d imagined he’d be travelling alone with Witaarde and had planned simply to shoot him dead once they got to the elephant herd. Rudd complicated the picture, but not by much.
A phone rang. Gabriel paid attention to Ruud’s side of the conversation.
‘Yah, right beside me.’
—
‘The best way to shoot an elephant.’
—
‘Hold on. Thirty minutes.’
—
‘OK, boss.’
Ruud turned to Gabriel.
‘That was Julius. He’s found the herd. It’s small. Just a bull and two cows plus three babies. But plenty enough for us. It’ll be a good haul, too.’
Gabriel nodded. He realised he wanted to take two lives and save six. Was he getting sentimental? He didn’t know. Only that he wasn’t going to let these men kill and butcher any more elephants.
After half an hour’s driving through lighter scrub, Ruud pointed off to the right.
‘There’s the plane.’
Gabriel followed his extended finger. The Cessna stood out against the brown and green like one of the egrets they’d seen striding along the mud flats skirting a small lake at the entrance to the park.
Beside the Cessna, Gabriel could make out a white pickup – a bakkie. But what troubled him was the truck’s contents.
53
Next to the bakkie, Gabriel could see four brown-skinned men standing alongside a white man that had to be Witaarde.
Ruud roared off the track and rumbled the Range Rover across the dusty earth, slewing to a stop some fifty feet from the bakkie and throwing up a dust cloud that drifted across the open ground. It enveloped the loose group of men, forcing them to hide their noses and mouths in elbow crooks or behind hats.
He climbed out and Gabriel followed. As the dust cloud cleared, Witaarde strode forward and stuck his face close to Ruud’s. His blue eyes were dark with rage against the dust sticking to his sweaty skin.
‘You fucking idiot! Don’t you ever pull a trick like that again. If those kaffirs weren’t here I’d knock you down.’
The big man’s eyes glistened with unshed tears and Gabriel knew where he had seen that level of fear before. A cult compound deep in the Brazilian rainforest. A demented Frenchman named Christophe Jardin – the self-styled Père Christophe – who’d ruled like an absolute monarch until Gabriel had deposed him.
‘I, I’m sorry, Julius,’ Ruud stuttered. ‘I just thought it would be funny to see those kaffirs choking.’
‘Yeah, well it wasn’t funny from where I was standing. Come on, let’s get them organised.’
Witaarde turned to Gabriel.
‘Gabriel! How do you like this fine game park?’
‘Who are they?’ Gabriel asked, pointing at the black men unloading long guns from the bakkie.
‘They’ve come down from Congo-Brazzaville to help out. What? You thought it would be just us two? Listen, man, this isn’t some fucking ego trip for one of those “white hunter” wannabes. This is my business. This is my country’s future we’re building.’
‘Sorry, Julius, I meant no disrespect. I was just curious, that’s all.’
The apology, which Gabriel had figured, correctly, would appeal to the man’s inflated sense of his own importance, worked. Witaarde clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Yah, well, that’s who they are. You have a problem with any of them, you bring it to me.’
‘Understood. When do I get the Dakota?’
Witaarde grinned.
‘In a hurry, are you?’
‘No. But I like to familiarise myself with any weapon I shoot. SOP: standard operating procedure.’
‘Yah? Well, m
y SOP is you get a gun when I say so and not before.’
‘Supposing we’re attacked.’
Witaarde narrowed his eyes.
‘Attacked by who?’
‘I don’t know, the Botswana Defence Force? Other poachers? Lions?’
‘You let me worry about security. These boys have seen plenty of action. If I was a lion I’d keep well clear of them. Unless I wanted to end up with my pelt on some millionaire’s den floor. As for the army, forget it. They’re cowards. After what we did to the last lot, they’ll be keeping their heads down for a good while yet.’
‘What about other poachers?’
Witaarde snorted.
‘Huh! This park is under our control. It’s all thrashed out higher up than you need to worry about.’
Gabriel shrugged.
‘Fair enough. And they’re disciplined, are they? The Congolese?’
‘Disciplined? This isn’t the British army, my friend. We don’t do fucking drill. They’re tough, ruthless and efficient. And they can shoot straight. That’s all the discipline I need from them.’
Witaarde checked his watch.
‘It’s going to get dark in a couple of hours. We need to move and Brik needs to get the bird in the air again. He’s picking us up when we’ve got what we came for.’
Witaarde went over to talk to the pilot. He tapped his watch. He must be setting up a routine for bringing him back when the hunt was over. Gabriel watched him gesturing to Ruud, who nodded, climbed into the Range Rover and roared off back towards the park entrance. Gabriel strolled over to the four Congolese poachers.
To a man, they were lean and muscular. All wore a basic uniform of camouflage shirt, trousers and boots. The headgear ranged from wide-brimmed bush hats to baseball caps and a dun-coloured bandanna. One man wore a pair of mirror-lensed Aviators. He grinned at Gabriel.
Each carried a knife in a leather sheath on his belt, plus a machete dangling from a leather or woven sling. The approach was that of his former brothers in the SAS. You chose the clothes and personal equipment you felt best met your personal needs.
