An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘So you said. I’m still not sure.’

  Sebastian, who had remained quiet so far, took a step closer to Emma, but directed his words to Natangwe. ‘There are families in South Africa who have no idea what happened to their loved ones on that flight. My uncle’s been talking about finding this Dakota ever since I was a kid. Please, it would mean a great deal if you could help us.’

  Natangwe frowned.

  Emma detected a slight scent of cologne on Sebastian. She had never dated a guy who wore a scent, but she loved the smell of this man. ‘So, where do you fit in with the mining company?’ she asked him.

  He looked at her and smiled, his teeth even and white. ‘Nowhere. I’m in my uncle’s business, import–export. I look after a lot of his overseas work, travelling to factories in Asia, checking on our Australian operations, going to design fairs and trade shows in Europe and America, that sort of thing. He’s a big shareholder in the mining company and I’m just kind of tagging along.’

  ‘Nice work,’ Emma said.

  Sebastian laughed. ‘It’s a living. I studied law at university but I’ve found business far more interesting. Andre’s company is rapidly growing. I give him some limited legal advice, but I love the travel. I think what you’re doing, though, is fascinating.’

  Emma heard a far-off drone and turned around to the north, shielding her eyes as she peered through the heat haze. ‘Dust trail from a vehicle. All of a sudden it’s like Grand Central Station here.’

  Dorset frowned. ‘Well, whoever it is they shouldn’t be here.’

  Natangwe looked at the approaching speck. ‘It’s Alex.’

  ‘He left not long before you arrived,’ Emma said to Dorset. ‘One of his lions has probably been killed by a farmer.’

  ‘They’re not his lions,’ Natangwe said. ‘They belong to the people of Namibia.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Dorset.

  ‘Time is wasting,’ Horsman said. ‘Shall we get moving?’

  ‘Wait,’ Emma countered. ‘I have to see what Alex wants, it must be important for him to come back.’

  Horsman checked his watch and looked at Sutton, who shrugged his shoulders. Alex’s truck took shape and Emma broke away from the men to greet him. ‘What’s up?’ she asked as he opened the door.

  Alex got down from the driver’s seat and looked past her to the men. ‘That’s Sutton’s mystery man – or men?’

  She nodded. ‘They want to take us flying, over the desert, to look for Harry’s aeroplane.’

  ‘I’ve just come back to pack up.’ He walked back to his truck and opened the door.

  She went to him and put her hand on his arm. ‘I’ve got an idea. The collar on your lion, it’s a GPS collar, right, not a radio collar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you know, more or less, where the lion is, right?’

  ‘Yes, I know where he is, or to be more precise, where his collar is. Sometimes a farmer will kill a lion then take the collar somewhere else and burn it, or try to make it look like the collar fell off. I’m actually more worried about the females in his area. There is a small pride of two lionesses with two cubs. XLR 501 was near them. I need to know if those females are all right, but they are not collared. The collar that stopped moving is several hundred kilometres away. I want to get there before nightfall.’

  ‘All right, wait here. Don’t leave just yet.’ Emma walked over to the two older men. ‘Professor, Andre, Alex has a problem. He needs to get to the last known location of the lion as soon as possible, and to check on another pride.’

  ‘Andre is looking for an aeroplane, Emma, not lions.’

  Horsman raised his eyebrows. ‘Emma, does Alex know that you’re leaving with us now and what we’re looking for?’

  Emma nodded. ‘I just told him. He could help us look for the Dakota, as well. He spends all his time in the bush and his eyesight is amazing.’

  Horsman rubbed his chin and looked to Sutton. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Sebastian said.

  Dorset looked back towards Alex. ‘I suppose it’s the right thing to do.’

  Emma returned to Alex and recounted her conversation with the men. He wasn’t as excited as she’d hoped. ‘Emma, all my equipment is in my truck. If I fly over the pride and they’re out in the desert we most likely will not be able to land and there will be nothing I can do for them.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘but at least you’ll know where they are and if they are OK?’

  Alex shrugged his shoulders, but agreed to come. Emma found herself hoping it was partly because he wanted to stay in her company.

  *

  Sonja woke, hungover again, and ate a full cooked breakfast at the B&B in Klein Windhoek where she had spent the night. She settled her bill and loaded her meagre belongings into the pastor’s Land Rover.

  ‘Where to next?’ she asked herself out loud as she started the engine. Her question was as pertinent to her life at the moment as it was to the journey ahead. She had no idea what she would do with herself. She didn’t have to go back to work as a military contractor, but nor could she see herself whiling away her days and years as a Beverly Hills widow. The thought of moving to Scotland didn’t appeal to her either. She would have loved to be near her daughter and spend more time with her, but even though their relationship was stronger than it ever had been, she knew enough about young women to realise that the last thing a university student needed was her mother hanging around. Also, she’d had enough of windswept, rainy moors and freezing weather in her brief time with the British Army; the rest of her career had been spent fighting wars in warmer climes.

  Sonja had toyed with the idea of setting up her own contracting business, but with the coalition forces pulling the plug on Afghanistan there was a reduced demand and an oversupply of ex-soldiers. Iraq was looking promising again with the rise of Islamic State, but the redeployment of troops from the west had been minimal so far. She quite liked the idea of Kenya – Al-Shabaab was a threat and the beaches were nice. However, she simply couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for any of them. But her current concern was more immediate. Emma was fine, and now Sonja had a few days to kill.

  Sonja turned on the heater in the truck – it was chilly here in the capital – and switched on the radio. A Hitradio Namibia announcer was giving the national weather forecast, in German. The seaside town of Swakopmund was going to reach an unseasonal twenty-nine today.

  She put the car in gear and waited as the B&B’s manager opened the security gates with a remote control. ‘Swakopmund it is,’ Sonja said to herself as she rolled out onto Barella Street then turned right into Nelson Mandela Avenue.

  Sonja drove through Katutura, which had been the official location for the black people of Windhoek, segregated from the whites who lived in more upmarket suburbs such as Klein Windhoek. Katutura itself had been divided into different areas for different tribes; Herero on one side of the road, Owambo on the other, and Nama in another location. The mechanics of the apartheid system, which had filtered across into South West Africa, seemed absurd when viewed through the prism of time, but as a child she had thought it all perfectly normal.

  Clear of the city the smooth tar road took her north towards the town of her birth, Okahandja. An uneasiness, like indigestion, grew in her with each passing kilometre. On the one hand she wanted to see how the town had changed – what was the same, and if any of the precious few pleasant memories of her childhood could be rekindled – and on the other, she dreaded it.

  If Sonja had one guiding motivator or a creed in her life it was her desire – her need – to move forward. It was like the first time she’d been in an ambush, in Sierra Leone: her army training had overcome the instinctive need to run away; instead she had charged into the barrage of rebel fire and broken through their lines. To dither or to turn one’s back was to present more
of a target; to push on, to drive through the fire was to get past it, and either move on, literally, or turn and fight on one’s own terms. As she left the hills of the city for the open, grassy plains and farms of her childhood she realised that was why she was finding it so incredibly hard to get over Sam – for the first time in her life she seemed incapable of fighting through the sorrow and the pain and moving on. She was stuck in the purgatory of here and now. Her drinking was what they called in the army a ‘combat indicator’ of a problem – that, and all the other fucked-up shit she’d been doing lately.

  But how to move on? She had been alone before Sam, and content to find sex when and if she needed it on a casual basis, or to take matters into her own hands, so why should it be so impossible for her to move on from Sam, to lay him to rest, and to return to that same state?

  Why? She knew the answer; it was because she was not the person she had been before she met Sam Chapman – she was half that woman. She was like any of the many soldiers she’d known in Afghanistan who had lost a limb, or two, to an IED. They spoke of the pain of a phantom limb, still feeling the missing arm or leg when they closed their eyes, but the illusion of the physical presence was compounded and tortured by a feeling of agonising, twisted pain. That’s how her heart felt.

  A road sign said Okahandja was ten kilometres further down the road. Her family’s farm was on the other side of the town, heading north, and her route would take her to the west. She didn’t mind that she wouldn’t be passing the farm and even if she had, she would not have turned off on the gravel road that led to the house where she had grown up.

  The place held few fond memories for her. There were some, of course – riding her horse with her father alongside her, camping in the bush with him and him teaching her about tracking. The war had put an end to those good times. Hans taught her to shoot, not only for the pot but also to defend herself. Her little fingers had bled and been covered in blood blisters as she learned to load a twenty-round R1 magazine with 7.62-millimetre bullets in under seven seconds. Her father had inherited the farm, but he was not interested in cattle; he preferred to go off hunting with his friends, and when the war intensified he’d been more than happy to leave the territorial forces for a fulltime posting to Koevoet.

  Her mother had been left to run the farm and she had hated it. She was British and loathed the hot summers and the endless dry winters. When the terrorists mortared the farm and a group of them tried to get into the farmhouse, Sonja had killed her first man; she was aged ten.

  The tall communication tower in Okahandja came into view and she remembered it from Sunday trips to town for church. There were no happy Sunday school memories, just those of her father coming back from the bush, dirty and sweaty in his camouflage uniform and green canvas boots, and wanting nothing more from his wife and family than a safe place to drink himself into oblivion.

  Sonja knew, now, what he had been through. She had been there herself – was there now – and the rational part of her mind kept reminding her that she could seek help if she wanted. Sonja had made her peace with Hans, before he died. He had sobered up, found God, and remarried.

  Mercifully, a new bypass had been built around Okahandja so she was spared any further pain that the town’s old buildings and streets might have dredged up, and instead hit the road, which turned southwest, towards the coast. The country here was thorny bushveld, game farms and some cattle. On the side of the road warthogs fossicked with their snouts in the dirt, and through the trees she caught glimpses of the occasional farmhouse or hunting lodge, some with Bavarian-style high-pitched roofs. There was little to distract her from her thoughts, which was a pity.

  Sonja remembered the morning Sam had left for Africa. She had tried hard not to recall those last precious hours, but now, lulled by the monotony of the countryside and the long straight road that she navigated on autopilot, his voice came back to her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was the first thing he had said to her when she’d opened her eyes.

  They had fought, late into the night, as he packed. One of his faults was that he was disorganised and always left his packing until the last minute. She, on the other hand, always had a bag ready to go, a legacy from her time as a military contractor when she could be called away at a moment’s notice. He’d once accused her of being ready to walk out on him, if the going got too tough. That barb had hurt her more than anything else he’d ever said to her.

  He gave in too easily, another of his faults. She was still angry, when she’d woken, and ready to go a few more verbal rounds with him, but he’d kissed her, on the forehead then on the lips. She had sighed.

  ‘I still think you should let me go with you, and . . .’

  He’d kissed her protest away, gently. ‘I told you last night, I need to do this shoot, and I don’t need you to be my bodyguard.’

  Sonja had frowned. She had known, and still understood, even after what had happened to him, that he was right. Perhaps she could have shot the poacher who killed him, or given him better first aid, or taken a bullet for him, but that was all academic. Sam was right: he had needed to go to South Africa by himself, as much as it wounded her.

  ‘I don’t want to go away with you being mad at me,’ he’d whispered, and moved his hand between her breasts, tracing a line down her sternum, over the flatness of her belly.

  She was still mad at him, but when she looked up into his eyes as he lay there propped on one elbow, she felt her anger cool. He was just too goddamned sexy. Sonja had drawn his face to hers and kissed him deeply.

  He had teased her, as he always had, until she was close to orgasm and she’d climbed on top of him, the way they both liked it. She had climaxed almost immediately, and rolled off him, but he’d then moved between her legs and entered her again, looking down at her. Her body was still quivering, still acutely sensitive from the first time, and each long thrust of him was like a mini jolt of electricity; it set her on edge with desire and she locked herself around him, drawing him deeper into her.

  When he was finished he stayed there, melded to her. She hadn’t wanted to let him go, and when she’d closed her eyes she’d been annoyed when she’d felt a tear squeeze through her tightly shut lids.

  ‘Hey, hey, my big tough girl, what’s this?’ He’d kissed the tear away.

  ‘I’m just tired, that’s all,’ she’d replied. She hated showing weakness, and hated women who cried over nothing. ‘My eyes are sore.’

  He had smiled down at her and kissed her again. ‘Are you going to miss me?’

  ‘No.’

  He’d laughed, and she’d felt it through her body. Even so, she couldn’t stop another couple of tears welling.

  ‘Oh, baby, it’s all right. I’ll be home before you know it.’

  Sonja had felt the anger return then. She hated it when he was condescending to her, treating her like a child. ‘Don’t call me baby! I’m fine.’

  ‘I love you, you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’d chuckled again, then withdrawn from her. He got up and stepped into the shower. She’d thought of joining him, but decided against it. It was bad enough he’d seen her cry; she didn’t want him to think she couldn’t live without him. She had to let him go.

  In the Land Rover, driving through the heat haze, she screamed at the top of her voice, until her vocal chords ached.

  Chapter 14

  Windhoek’s Hosea Kutako International, Hudson Brand mused, would have to be one of the few capital city airports in the world with not a building visible beyond the terminal complex. As far as he could see was flat, dry landscape studded with hardy blackthorn acacias.

  He and Matthew Allchurch disembarked from the South African Airways flight and walked across the baking black runway to the terminal building. They cleared immigration without delay or issue, along with the other tourists who had been on the flight.

  ‘I
did my military service in Pretoria, as an army lawyer, before things got busy in South West Africa,’ Allchurch said as they walked through the arrivals hall to the car rental desks. ‘I’ve never been to Namibia. I always thought – hoped, in an odd way – Helen and I might come here to lay Gareth to rest or to bring his body home.’

  ‘Try not to get your hopes up, this is still a long shot,’ Brand cautioned him.

  ‘I gave up getting my hopes up decades ago, Hudson.’

  They picked up a Jeep from Avis and Brand said he was happy to drive. ‘It’ll take us about five hours to get to Etosha,’ he added.

  They skirted downtown Windhoek and Brand was relieved when Allchurch said he wasn’t hungry after eating on the aircraft and was OK to keep going. Brand always felt most relaxed when on the move; he found if he stayed in any one place for too long the demons from his past started catching up.

  Brand mulled over the case, for that was how he viewed this arrangement, as he drove. Once clear of the city, the countryside was empty of people and distractions. Matthew Allchurch would be happy if he found his dead son’s body, but Brand had a nasty feeling in his gut that the publicity of the discovery of Venter’s body – still listed in the media as himself – would flush out some ghosts from his past who were very much alive. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even after all this time, and despite being disillusioned with America at the time, the way he had been summarily dismissed from the CIA still rankled.

  It wasn’t that he regretted having to turn his back on the States – he had carved out a better life for himself in Africa than he probably would have in the US – but his name had been tainted, and in some records deep in a vault in Langley, Hudson Brand was still branded a criminal. The war in Angola had left him feeling bitter and cynical, and even if he’d wanted to challenge the way he’d been dismissed or appeal the ruling, by the end of the conflict he couldn’t be bothered. He’d seen enough of the way foreign powers – be they the Americans, Cubans or Russians – meddled in the affairs of other countries to know he didn’t want to re-join the company. But even if he was willing to put the past behind him he knew there would be others from that time who could not afford to forget him, or the fact he was still alive.