The Serpentine Road

by Mendelson, Paul

  De Vries shrugs.

  ‘There was, you see,’ Basson continues, clearly pleased with himself, ‘a silver lining to these events for the man who I believe is ultimately behind them.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘One last connection, Colonel. Then, everything will be clear to you. General Thulani – ultimately your boss – has an attaché, a man who reports to him, but not to him alone . . .’

  ‘That little fuck, Julius Mngomezulu,’ De Vries says, mispronouncing the name comprehensively.

  Basson actually laughs.

  ‘Who else is he reporting to?’

  Basson’s expression returns to his default: emotionless.

  ‘That is the correct question to ask. The man who placed him there originally, via his influence within the Police Ministry: the esteemed and much loved hero, Bheka Bhekifa.’

  De Vries grabs his jaw, runs his hand around it slowly, mind racing.

  ‘The leak about his son?’

  ‘Old man Bhekifa exists only for the cause. To see his son consorting with the daughter of Graeme Holt, to hear that she would bankroll a party in direct opposition to the ANC . . . It had to stop. I have a recording of the anonymous tip-off received by the Sunday Cape Herald. Perhaps you would like it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s in the bundle I will give you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Eric Basson stands.

  ‘I rely on you, Colonel, not to divulge the source of this material. I don’t wish to be coarse, but there would be a heavy price to pay if you could not keep my confidence.’

  De Vries nods solemnly. Basson has impressed sufficiently for him to heed his warning.

  ‘You will have sufficient evidence to prosecute Nkosi, if you are allowed to. Mngomezulu may be more difficult to pin down but, perhaps, you will find a way.’

  Basson hands De Vries a plain brown envelope. De Vries takes it, shakes his hand, says: ‘I understand that you have resources but, from a few notes given to you by Marantz, you put this all together?’

  Basson puts his hand on De Vries’s shoulder, slowly coerces him across the room to the door.

  ‘That was easy, Colonel. When I worked for our previous government, over many years . . . The destruction of character and reputation, the placing of assets within the opposition, assassination: that was my responsibility.’

  De Vries studies himself in the mirrors of the gilded lift carriage as it slowly descends to the ground floor. He knows that Basson has made the final link to Bhekifa faster than he could ever have done. A tape of Mngomezulu could prove vital to his prosecution. Whatever Marantz has promised this man, whatever debt he now owes, he feels it is justified.

  His mind races: he will bring down Nkosi and Mngomezulu, poison the network. All his life he fights corruption and injustice, and the scale of this conspiracy shocks him more than he can yet register.

  He walks determinedly through the bland but comfortable foyer of the building, out onto the street. After his sleepless night, the time spent in the bakkie this morning, in his office chair and facing Basson, he needs the walk back to his office, never mind that he will be wet again.

  The rain is little more than a light, hazy mist. He breathes in the fresh, moist air and it occurs to him that he, like so many others, has been longing for winter. He turns the corner of the tree-lined street, heads back towards the centre of town. He senses something behind him and turns, feels a sudden sharp pain in his side, twists to see a broad black man, and looks down to see a pistol pushed into his hip. His mouth dries. He swallows. A second man appears to his left, puts his hand on his neck. De Vries feels a strange tingling sensation and then deep, throbbing pain, the feeling in his legs disappears; he slumps to his knees, is held up again by the two men. A black Mercedes rolls slowly towards them, stops. One of the men opens the back door and they lift him inside. He feels dizzy, very sick, his body below his neck no longer part of him, beyond his control. The men get in either side of him, close the doors. As the car moves slowly away, one of them pushes his head down so that it almost touches his thighs. He senses, more than feels, the brown envelope being pulled from his inside pocket, disappearing from his realm. The car feels cold; he feels cold. He shivers, struggles for breath. All he can see is a dark haze made up of his suit trousers, the dim interior of the car, the smell of the black men.

  He senses acceleration, does not know whether it is velocity or unconsciousness.

  He is aware of half walking, half being dragged from the car to a building. He smells the sea, fuel-oil, assumes that he is at the docks. Ahead of him, looming out of the dusk, is a huge oil-drilling platform. They swing him to his right, inside a warehouse smelling of oil. He can feel his feet, sense blood in his legs, is stupidly relieved: for a time, in his confusion, he had believed himself paralyzed. They march him the length of the building. He hears rain drumming on the tin roof; none of the men speak. They reach a door, push it open, hustle him through into a smaller space, dimly light by two bare bulbs. There is a wooden table and three chairs; they sit him in the chair on its own, facing two chairs across the table. One of the men walks across the room, exits through a further door; two stand opposite him, guns at their sides.

  ‘Who are you?’ De Vries’s jaw seems tight, his voice strained.

  The men ignore him.

  ‘If you’re SAPS, we’re on the same side.’

  The far door opens, crashes back against the wall. He sees Nkosi striding towards him, behind him one of the men who took him from the street.

  ‘What are we going to do with you?’ Nkosi says, pointing his chin at him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Nkosi laughs, produces the brown envelope from behind him, slaps it on the table.

  ‘I want to know who you were meeting today.’

  De Vries shakes his head.

  ‘It’s not going to take long,’ Nkosi says. ‘I will ask questions and you will tell me answers.’

  ‘Now I see why you didn’t call me sir,’ De Vries says groggily. ‘You think you’re in charge.’

  Nkosi’s eyes flare.

  ‘Right here, right now, I am in charge.’ He walks around the table, leans down to De Vries. ‘You know how easily a man can get lost in the docks?’

  De Vries closes his eyes, blows out his cheeks.

  ‘The man you saw today?’ Nkosi repeats.

  ‘If I knew his name, I wouldn’t tell you,’ De Vries says. ‘But, I don’t. I was given an envelope, told it contained information about who killed Taryn Holt.’

  Nkosi shakes his head.

  ‘No, no, no, no . . . We have been watching you since you left your office yesterday morning. We know you were in that building for over an hour.’

  ‘It’s a maze.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, De Vries.’

  ‘Had a nice trip to Greyton?’

  Nkosi tilts back his head.

  ‘You were a lucky man there.’

  De Vries sits up as straight as he can muster, speaks calmly and firmly.

  ‘We knew it was you. Everyone in my team knows. All you are doing now is implicating your colleagues.’ He looks around, stares at each man. ‘Don’t know you boys. Come down from Pretoria maybe?’

  Nkosi twists his arm around himself, swings it back at full force, the back of his hand smacking De Vries across the face, the force pushing him off the chair, sending him sprawling onto the cold floor. The snap of the impact echoes around the room, before a second crash, of the chair falling, as if in slow motion, next to him.

  De Vries stays where he is, giving himself time to recover from the shock. The stinging pain he can bear; it has revived him, reminded him that he can still feel, still move. In the moments that follow, he looks up at Nkosi’s legs, knows that the man is trapped, that he has no move to make but to do away with De Vries and make his escape. The realization sickens him.

  ‘Your team,’ Nkosi says, ‘know nothing. You have a theory and now you
have some information, but they don’t. So, when you are gone and we are back in Guateng, everything goes back to a man in a park with the murder weapon.’

  Nkosi stands over him.

  ‘And your meeting today was secret. No one knows who you were seeing. Who was it?’

  De Vries is sitting up, still shaken. He sees Nkosi above him, the two guards focused on covering him with their weapons.

  ‘I’m not waiting.’

  ‘I’ve told you . . . I was given the envelope.’

  Nkosi stares at him, then suddenly lashes out with his foot, kicking De Vries hard in the neck, watching him fall backwards, hands clutching his windpipe. Nkosi takes one step over to him, slowly raises his foot and brings it down on De Vries’s neck, then transfers pressure from his other leg until the weight of his body is crushing De Vries’s neck, his air passage.

  ‘Who?’

  He releases his weight, watches De Vries gasp, watches him grimace as he fights to form the words.

  ‘Why would I tell you? I’m dead anyway . . .’

  ‘It will not only be you,’ Nkosi spits. ‘We have Sergeant Ben Thwala. At the airport.’

  De Vries suddenly feels defeated. He could have capitulated and saved himself and his team. If this is the extent of their power, he knows he is outgunned, cornered.

  ‘A tall man, narrow spectacles, pinstripe suit . . .’

  Nkosi shouts: ‘Name?’

  ‘No name . . .’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘No name . . .’

  ‘No name?’ Nkosi spits. ‘No name, no fucking mercy.’ He kicks De Vries again, sends him sprawling.

  In the fraction of the second after his body stops moving, there is a silence in which he hears a sound in the distance: something familiar, something comforting. Then, nothing. He raises his head, sees Nkosi moving back from him, hears muttered instructions. Suddenly, the door through which they entered crashes open, four men in full commando gear race through, shouting warnings. The men guarding De Vries throw down their weapons, raise their hands. De Vries presses himself flat on the ground, sees the far door open and close.

  ‘Colonel de Vries.’

  He looks up; he sees the haunting, startling sight of the commandos, clad in black, faces obscured by night-sights, staring down the sights of snub-nosed machine guns.

  De Vries pulls himself up until he is on his knees and nods. Two more enter, run past them, towards the far doorway. De Vries struggles to his feet, brain racing. These must be the Hawks, the elite armed-response unit of the SAPS, perhaps? The men behind him shout an all-clear, the team-leader in front of him turns and repeats the all-clear over his shoulder. Through the door, flanked by two further men, the immense form of General Thulani appears. He strides towards De Vries.

  ‘You’re safe, Colonel.’

  De Vries nods, croaks: ‘Yes, sir.’

  Thulani looks around.

  ‘Where is Nkosi?’

  De Vries points back to the far door.

  ‘The door. He left just as your men arrived.’

  Thulani stares across the room, until his view is obscured by De Vries rising to his feet, stumbling forwards.

  ‘Colonel.’

  He begins to run towards the door, feels his back spasm, feels his lungs draw in a huge breath. Adrenalin has him charged with energy.

  ‘Colonel de Vries.’

  He throws it open, pushes himself through it, hears Thulani barking orders behind him. Within five seconds the paramilitaries are beside him, jogging easily to keep up with his attempt at a sprint. They do not break their pace, but one shouts: ‘Your orders are to return to the warehouse, Colonel, sir.’

  De Vries can scarcely find the breath to reply.

  ‘Find Nkosi. We must find Nkosi.’

  He thrusts his head down, pushes himself on, his entire body charged with utter determination. Condemned, yet still alive. Not just alive: sprinting.

  They reach another doorway; this time, it takes them outside. The rain clatters onto De Vries, but he scans his surroundings through the mist of his breath, hot in the mercifully cool night air. Ahead of them, across the wide expanse of water, the oil rig blazes with light. To his right, there is another hundred metres of road before it stops abruptly at a tall fence, reinforced with razor wire. To his left, the pathway around the edge of the dock follows the water towards the rig. One of the men barks: ‘Suspect at eleven o’clock, on foot, running towards the rig.’

  De Vries strains to see through the blurring rain, makes out a jogging form, dressed the way he thinks Nkosi was. He starts running, finds the armed men overtaking him, sprinting despite their heavy gear, accelerating away from him. Reaching the corner, he turns towards the overwhelming form of the drilling platform, hears shouts, cannot make them out over the rain and the sound of his panting. When he reaches the gate in the metal fence, a uniformed security guard tries to block his way without much conviction.

  De Vries charges him aside, hears the man bellow after him: ‘No guns . . . No flame, no guns.’

  He reaches the long gangway, pushes himself forward, begins to pound up the steep gradient, shoes sliding despite the rough metal ridges, calves burning, lungs raw and grainy, taking an age to travel the distance across the steel grey water, each step crashing beneath him, rain and sweat pouring down his face. He finally reaches the rig entrance, screams at another security guard: ‘Police!’

  He pushes past him, drawn to the distant echo of boots on metal walkways, scans each face that appears in doorways, pushes himself on. He reaches a corner of the rig, stares down the next plain, sees nothing, hears nothing. He pulls himself back, falls through the doorway inside, climbs the staircase ahead of him, using the handrails to haul himself upwards. On the landing, he looks down one edge, then the other; he sees movement, hears the rhythm of drumming boots, begins to half jog, half stumble in pursuit.

  By the time he has reached the next corner, his feet heavier and heavier on the cross-hatched metal gangway, he knows he is spent. He bends over the railings, retches into the darkness. He turns around, rests against the metal posts, hands on knees, thinks: there is no way off this rig but the way I came in – or down there. He pulls himself up, sees another entrance inside the rig, struggles to open it, his hands weak and greasy. He manages it, stumbles inside, over the stairway, down a level. There, he locates a bulkhead hatch, gets it open, rushes to the outside walkway. From here, he sees down towards the warehouses, the arc lights illuminating the diagonal drops which fall relentlessly, the road leading to the guarded entrance to the rig. He begins to jog in that direction.

  He gets halfway there, then sees the back of a metal door swing towards him. He throws himself forward so that he is hard up against the rig’s bulkhead. The door opens almost completely back on itself, but not quite. De Vries sees Nkosi, gun raised, scanning to his left, beginning to turn to his right. In the time it takes him to peer around the door, De Vries has started to move. At the moment Nkosi registers him, De Vries is half flying, half falling towards him. He tries to fire his weapon, flails with his left hand to protect himself. De Vries hits him first with his chin, then his open arms, grabbing at Nkosi, pulling him down with him, all the weight he feels in his body somehow on top of Nkosi. They hit the gangway, Nkosi first, De Vries half landing on him, then rolling off the man’s body towards the railings. He spins around, crashes into the railings, feels lines of pain across his legs and side, finds his head unsupported, in free space. His body seems wedged between the icy wire railings, half into the void. Beneath him, there is only the all-encompassing black velvet water of the dock.

  He pulls himself away from the edge, fingers cold and oily, their grip failing. He pushes back against the railings, hauls himself up, turns to see Nkosi struggling to get a foothold on the greasy walkway. This time, De Vries charges, head down, stumbling, collapsing into him. He feels Nkosi’s hands on him, a momentary resistance, but then they are both falling; he forwards, Nkosi backwards. They crash into the
metal bulkhead. Nkosi crumples, De Vries bounces backwards away from him, stops himself, sees Nkosi scrabbling to drag himself up. De Vries thuds towards him, sees him keeling, understands suddenly that the man is beaten. He stands right up to Nkosi, raises his knee viciously into the man’s groin, and stands straight as he watches Nkosi double up, fall to his knees, howl.

  PART FOUR

  ‘The envelope?’

  ‘With us.’

  De Vries wants it for himself, knows that if General Thulani has it, there will be questions he cannot answer.

  ‘The recording of the call to the newspaper?’

  ‘Being analyzed. I have heard it. I believe it is Lieutenant Mngomezulu. We will seek proof.’

  ‘You have him?’

  Thulani smiles.

  ‘He is under arrest.’

  ‘He will be interrogated,’ David Wertner says. ‘We will find out who he works for.’

  De Vries turns towards him, thinks at least his focus is elsewhere.

  ‘Your own movements in the last forty-eight hours, Colonel, require an explanation. The source of your information is unclear. Who provided you with this material?’

  De Vries sighs, turns from Wertner back to Thulani.

  ‘Concentrate your efforts on Mngomezulu and his colleagues, Colonel,’ Thulani tells Wertner. ‘Colonel de Vries is to be congratulated for not capitulating in the face of intense pressure.’

  De Vries looks down, disbelieving that he is receiving support from Thulani.

  ‘Your methods, Colonel, are highly questionable, but the result achieved in this instance, I believe, justifies them.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘It’s interesting how it has turned out again, that your investigations lead to one of our own?’

  De Vries turns to Wertner.

  ‘Strange how that it is, isn’t it, sir.’