An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘The map’s at the house I’m staying at, about twelve klicks from here. It’s in a metal .50-calibre ammunition box, waterproof and fireproof, with my birth certificate and a picture of my mom and my first girlfriend.’

  Allchurch smiled. ‘You’re not just a safari guide, I’ve learned. You’re a tracker, a hunter of people. We’re going to find that aircraft, and we’re going to find my son.’

  The odds were still crazy, but Brand thought that even the act of searching might still flush out his real prey, the man or men who had set him up, and the customers they’d been dealing with out in the icy nothingness of the Atlantic.

  ‘I have to warn you, Mr Allchurch, that if the people who were behind that mission are still alive and they get wind of what we’re up to they’ll be coming after us. They’ll want to find that aircraft just as much as you do, and they’ll be prepared to kill to get their hands on it.’

  The smile left Allchurch’s face. ‘Please, call me Matthew. A part of me, most of me, died the day the air force came to tell me my son was missing. I love my wife, more than anything on earth, but until we can finally lay Gareth to rest once and for all or find out what happened to him we’re just two people marking time until we die and join him. I don’t care if that happens sooner rather than later, and if it happens looking for my boy, then so be it.’

  Brand wasn’t as ready to die as Allchurch was, but he did feel bad about what had happened to the man’s son.

  ‘Hudson, I know my son wasn’t killed in action, and that he may very well have died because of what you did up there. But I want you to know that your story, while upsetting, has been something of a relief for me. You were acting in self-defence and, if you’re right, my son behaved in an honourable way. I still need to find the wreckage of the Dakota and, hopefully, Gareth’s body, so I can bring him home and give him a Christian burial.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Brand said.

  Chapter 12

  Windhoek was different in many ways from the city she remembered from her youth, but familiar in others.

  Sonja realised that part of what she was experiencing was to do with returning to a country that had been conquered – no, liberated was the word, she mentally corrected herself – by the people she had been taught to hate.

  She did not, in fact, hate the Herero or the Owambo or the Damara or any of the other peoples of Namibia. As a child she had feared the dire threat of armed SWAPO guerrillas attacking her in her bed but, ironically, when that nightmare became a reality she’d fought back and set in motion a life that would be defined by guns, wars and killing. She didn’t hate the pastor from whom she had stolen the Land Rover and, in fact, was feeling a little bad about the way she had treated him. He was a dirty old man, but Sonja realised her concern for Emma had brought out the lioness in her, when she probably could have hitched a lift with the man, easily fending off his advances, and hired a car in Mariental.

  Her journey from the red sands of the Kalahari had taken her through the grasslands and rocky kopjes that sprang up north of Rehoboth, then finally through the pass between the Khomas Hochland and the Auas mountains. After several hours of driving she had finally seen the city – not really more than a large town by world standards – sitting familiarly in a natural bowl of hills. A sign to ‘Heroes Acre’ pointed to the right. The monument was a daily reminder that Namibia had won her freedom through blood. There were no monuments for the losers, and Sonja had read online a few months ago that even the old statue of The Rider, a mounted member of the colonial Schutztruppe cast to commemorate those German soldiers who had fallen in battle against the Herero and Nama at the beginning of the twentieth century, had been unceremoniously relocated from outside the front of the Alte Feste, Windhoek’s Old Fort.

  New housing developments cascaded down the hills and there were more tall buildings but, again, even these were modest by the standards of other world capitals. The main road into town, which had been called Kaiserstrasse in her day, had been renamed Independence Avenue. She followed it until she came to the street formerly known as Harold Pupkewitz, and turned into what was now known as Nelson Mandela Avenue.

  There were plenty of bed and breakfast places to choose from in the suburb of Klein Windhoek, which had once been a whites-only neighbourhood and even now seemed reserved for those with money and status, regardless of colour. Sonja buzzed the intercom at the security gate of a place on the corner of Barella and Nelson Mandela streets and the gates opened. A woman told her there was a room free and Sonja checked in. The place was tranquil, with nice gardens and a pool. Half a dozen vehicles spoke of travelling salespeople and overland tourists. She parked the Land Rover next to her room, took her pack and Lotz’s cooler box inside and flopped down on the bed.

  Sonja was filthy and needed a shower, but she grabbed the remote for the TV and turned it on. Then she took out her satellite phone, opened the balcony door and placed the phone on the outside table. She went back inside, but as soon as the phone acquired enough satellites for a connection it beeped, signalling a message. Sonja went straight out and checked the phone.

  ‘Hell,’ she said. There was a message from a friend of Emma’s. Her daughter was fine and wanted nothing more than some information on a military uniform found on a body she had dug up on her archaeological dig. Sonja didn’t know whether to laugh or to scream. She had broken several laws to get into the country and to travel this far, and now it seemed she could have stayed in South Africa.

  She felt foolish. She couldn’t tell Emma she had been worried sick about her. Instead, she sent a short return message. Tell Emma I love her and have crossed into Namibia. Will travel to her dig site and see her in three days. Please ask her to contact me.

  Inside the room, she saw that the local Namibian Broadcasting Corporation news had started. She sat down on the bed and unlaced her boots, wrinkling her nose at the smell of her socks. She stopped peeling them off, however, when the announcer mentioned something about two Chinese nationals being arrested at Windhoek’s airport for attempting to smuggle fourteen rhino horns out of the country.

  Sonja turned up the volume.

  ‘The men, who appeared in court today, were denied bail. They were charged with possession of fourteen rhino horns,’ said the announcer. ‘Save the Rhino Trust manager, Stirling Smith, in Windhoek today for an international conference on rhino conservation, told NBC the seizure, while welcome, raised some serious questions.’

  Stirling’s face appeared on the screen. ‘The interesting thing about this arrest is that there haven’t been fourteen rhinos poached in Namibia in the last couple of years,’ Stirling said. ‘It’s possible this haul came from a stockpile somewhere, perhaps of privately owned rhinos that had died or been dehorned in the past. It’s a real mystery.’

  The announcer wrapped up the story, giving the police’s estimate of the street value of the seized horns in Vietnam, where the Chinese men had been destined for; Sonja whistled through her teeth when she converted the Namibian dollar value to one and a half million US dollars.

  She needed a drink, but first she needed to shower. When she was finished in the bathroom she put on clean underwear and her shorts, brushing the worst of the dust from them, and her spare shirt and sandals. She took the Glock with her, left her room and used the remote control to open the security gate.

  Joe’s Beerhouse always came up in conversation when people talked about nightlife in Namibia, and Sonja had passed the place on Nelson Mandela earlier when she’d been looking for somewhere to stay. Due to Windhoek’s elevation it was chilly outside, but Sonja had long ago learned to ignore the elements unless she was at risk of exposure or dehydration. Joe’s didn’t look like much from the street, just a cement slab wall topped with razor wire in a semi-industrial neighbourhood, but as she walked through the car park and inside, a tourist’s oasis revealed itself.

  Eclectic didn’t do justice to the selection
of antiques, bric-a-brac, street signs, colonial memorabilia, African objets d’art and plain old junk that cluttered just about every free inch of wall and ceiling space and much of the floor of Joe’s. Not so much a bar as a collection of bars all rambling off a central pebbled walkway, the place was already filling fast even though it had only just gone six o’clock.

  The maître d’ stopped Sonja and asked if she could help.

  ‘Table for one.’

  ‘Do you have a booking, ma’am?’ the woman asked.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  The woman sucked air in through her teeth. ‘We’re very full. I can see if I can find you a seat at a long table, will that be fine?’

  Sonja shrugged. She didn’t want to converse with strangers, but she had to eat something. ‘Sure, I’ll wait at that bar over there.’

  The clientele spoke a variety of European languages and some American English. Apart from a few local businessmen in short-sleeved shirts and chinos the dress of the day seemed to be safari chic; Sonja eased her way through a sea of khaki. She took a seat at a polished wooden bar, only noticing as she lowered herself that she was actually sitting on a toilet seat stuck to the top of a stool. She shook her head and ordered a half-litre of draught beer.

  Sonja swivelled on her toilet seat, looked behind her and saw the face of the man she had been watching on television not half an hour ago, the man she had once thought she would spend the rest of her life with.

  He had seen her; he stood up and walked towards her.

  ‘Sonja? It is you. Sonn. My God.’ He lowered his voice. ‘What are you doing here? I can’t believe they let you into the country.’

  Sonja took a long sip of the beer the barman handed her. She wasn’t feeling up to facing her past just yet. She was saved by the return of the woman who was going to show her to her table.

  ‘I’m going to eat. Alone.’ Sonja hopped off her stool and followed the waitress to an area cordoned off with clear plastic sheeting from the outdoor bar area. A fire blazed and Sonja took her seat at the end of a long wooden table set for about twenty. The group hadn’t arrived yet. She picked up the menu, doing her best to ignore Stirling, but he had followed her.

  He pulled out the chair in front of Sonja and sat down. ‘Aren’t you at least going to say hello?’

  Sonja pretended to study the menu, and eventually looked over the top of it. ‘The last time we saw each other you left me high and dry in the Caprivi. Good people were killed.’

  Stirling looked around, as though, Sonja thought, he expected her to be under surveillance. ‘You started a war in a peaceful country for nothing.’

  ‘Well, that depends on who you talk to.’

  Stirling sagged back in his chair. A waitress came and asked them if they wanted more drinks; Sonja ordered a brandy and Coke and Stirling asked for the same. Funny, she thought, he’d never drunk spirits when they were teenagers, only the occasional beer. He ran a hand through his hair, still thick, she noticed. ‘I was sorry to hear about Sam, really.’

  Sonja gritted her teeth. He didn’t have the right to even mention Sam’s name and her anger was only tempered by the wave of sadness that rose up again. All she could do was nod.

  ‘He was a good man.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ she hissed.

  Stirling, wisely, did not reply, but she was still in no mood to talk to him, no matter how many memories came flooding back of their childhood and youth. They had played together as children, his family managing a lodge and her father working there as the maintenance man. All he’d wanted to be when they were small was a safari guide and all she’d wanted at one point, until she reached the age of nineteen and realised she needed to get out of Botswana and see more of the world, was to be Mrs Stirling Smith. He was now living his dream and her life had been a series of bloody nightmares in the world’s great shitholes. She had, Sonja conceded, found the excitement she had been looking for, but it had come at a cost.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, trying to change the subject. ‘Planning a coup?’

  She almost laughed. He could still disarm her, and she didn’t like that. She worked hard to stay annoyed at him. ‘If you must know, I’ve come to visit my daughter.’

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘I haven’t had another.’

  ‘What’s she doing here, training the Namibian Defence Force how to water-board people?’

  ‘You’re very funny, you know that, Stirling? No,’ she added with a touch of parental pride, ‘she’s at university, studying archaeology, high distinctions every year.’

  The waitress came with their drinks, and the tour group noisily speaking French started taking their seats. Sonja polished off the last of her existing beer and handed the glass to the waitress. The booze was helping her keep her emotions in check around Stirling.

  ‘You must be proud of her.’

  ‘I am,’ Sonja said, ‘proud she didn’t end up like me.’

  ‘I think that hurt me most, you know,’ Stirling said, ‘when we met up last time and I found out you’d had a child. It was what I wanted most for us, when we were younger – for you to stay in Botswana and for us to make a family.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Stirling, man-up, you sound like a girl.’

  He smiled sadly. ‘You’re still in touch with your emotions, I see.’

  She did not need her old boyfriend psychoanalysing her, so she decided to change the conversation again. ‘I saw you on television, just now.’

  ‘I did a couple of interviews today,’ he said. ‘Rhino poaching’s getting out of hand in South Africa and it looks like it’s spreading to Namibia, although they’ve had a pretty good record so far.’

  Sonja remembered seeing rhinos in the delta when they were growing up, but more and more often Stirling’s father, and sometimes Hans, her father, were called out by rangers to inspect the carcasses of slain animals. All the rhino in the Okavango Delta had eventually been wiped out, and those few that were there today, she knew, had been imported from South Africa.

  ‘We’ve had another day today of lecturing each other and sitting around tables trying to work out a solution to the problem, but we just keep moving in circles. It’s hard to work out the best course of action.’

  Sonja knew the best course of action, and she had planned it and executed it. Tran Van Ngo was dead and buried, one less cashed-up kingpin to finance the poachers in Mozambique who were slaughtering rhinos in the Kruger and other national parks and private reserves. Sonja wasn’t under any illusion that her actions would stop the rhino trade, but they might slow it a little. It was a war, and like any other war the way to win was to take the fight to the enemy, ruthlessly, and to cut the head off the snake, as the Americans used to say in Iraq.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he pressed her.

  She realised she’d been lost in her thoughts. Sonja couldn’t tell Stirling about what she’d done in Vietnam – he might sell her out to Interpol, she mused, half seriously. Stirling liked picking good causes, but he lacked the guts or the balls to do the dirty work.

  ‘I was thinking that I don’t ever want to think about rhinos or rhino poachers again.’

  Stirling took a breath, then a sip of his drink. He grimaced, and she could tell he had only ordered the drink to try and impress her, or to find some common ground with her. ‘I really am sorry about Sam. I know I didn’t like him when I met him in Botswana, but he genuinely cared for wildlife and, in an odd way, his death did a lot of good. It focused attention in the US, if only for a short time, on the challenges we’re facing in Africa to protect the rhino, and it resulted in a huge increase in funding for a number of anti-poaching projects.’

  Sonja felt like stabbing him in the heart for the remarks he’d just made. ‘There was no sense in his death, and nothing good came of it. There’s no cause worth dying for, believe me.’
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  Stirling had always backed down on the few occasions they had argued when they were young lovers in Botswana. He hadn’t fought for her when she’d left Botswana for England. As a result, his response surprised her.

  ‘That’s bullshit, Sonja, and you know it. Are you playing the hardcore mercenary now? Are you going to tell me money is the only thing worth taking up arms for?’

  She was tired of this argument; it was one she’d fought back and forth on both sides in her own mind over the past twenty years. The wars she had been embroiled in had been over things that meant nothing to her – religion, oil, diamonds, more religion. ‘I don’t even think the money’s worth it any more.’

  Stirling leaned back in his seat and raised his eyebrows. ‘Too much competition these days, eh? Too many ex-GIs and SAS guys going down the private military company route? You being undercut, Sonn?’

  ‘Don’t mock me. But, for what it’s worth, you’re right. Besides, I’ve realised there are some things more important than money.’

  ‘Hallelujah.’ Stirling threw his hands up in the air. ‘Sonja Kurtz joins the human race, at last.’

  She felt like a cornered animal. Her instinct was to lash out, to attack, to go on the offensive. ‘Get fucked, Stirling.’

  The French woman seated next to her muttered something in disgust. Sonja couldn’t have cared less. Stirling reached out across the table now, for her hands, but she withdrew them. After a second she realised she had picked up the knife from the table, a reflex action. Embarrassed, she replaced it, worried Stirling might think she was a nut case. You are a nut case, she reminded herself. Still, she didn’t want him touching her, for a number of reasons.