An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  His heart was pounding and his breath was coming in great lungfuls, expelling through his nose like a blowing racehorse when he crouched beside the man. Brand shoved him, but there was no movement. ‘Damn.’ He’d hoped to question him.

  Brand climbed into the BMW, relieved to find the electronic key still in place. He punched the ignition button, put the vehicle in gear, and stood on the accelerator. Dirt and rocks fanned out behind him as he tore up the grass verge alongside the main road. As he steered he looked left, hoping for a sign of Matthew. When he had gone two hundred metres he pulled over, left the engine running and got out.

  ‘Matthew! Where are you?’ There was no answer. Brand pressed the button on the side of the Glock and let the magazine slide out into his left hand. He still had rounds left. He started to walk into the bush again, the pistol up and leading the way. ‘Matthew!’

  Adrenaline coursed through him and the heat of the day and the smell of the bush took him back to Angola, where this mess had all begun. There was a purity to combat, man against man, that had been missing from his time in the CIA and his life as an investigator.

  ‘Hudson, run! Get away from . . .’

  Allchurch’s warning cry was snuffed out with a dull thud and a scream. ‘Shit,’ Brand whispered to himself.

  ‘I’m going to kill him, Brand,’ a voice called out from the bush ahead of him.

  Brand looked behind him. The BMW was waiting, its engine purring. Fire crackled and roared in the wind, the flames and smoke licking across the road. This guy was going to kill Allchurch in any case – he wouldn’t be the kind to leave witnesses.

  A gunshot rang out and Brand heard Allchurch scream. ‘My bloody hand!’

  ‘I just shot off his little finger, Brand. I’m going to kill him slowly while you run away and save your own worthless skin. Don’t worry, I’ll come find you later.’

  ‘I’ve got your car, you poes. I’m going to get the police. They’ll find you.’

  The other man laughed. ‘This is Namibia, it’s an easy country to get lost in. Say goodbye to your friend. I’m going to shoot his cock off next.’

  The noise of an engine made Brand turn around. A battered Isuzu bakkie, a pickup with ‘OJ’ Outjo licence plates, emerged from the roiling smoke. The vehicle stopped, the driver’s side door opened and a man got out.

  Brand smiled and started walking into the scrub. ‘I’m coming for Allchurch, whoever you are. I’m holding my pistol up.’

  ‘Come in slowly and your friend gets to leave, almost in one piece.’ The man laughed at his own joke.

  Asshole, Brand thought. He pushed a thorny branch aside and was confronted by the barrel of an AK-47. The man holding the weapon was about fifty, hard-faced, the nose red from drinking but the eyes clear. He’d spoken with an Afrikaans accent. ‘Who do you work for?’

  The man chuckled again. ‘Drop the gun. Get down on your knees.’

  Brand tossed the Glock into the grass between them. ‘We can make a deal.’ He lowered himself down slowly. ‘I know where the Dakota is.’

  ‘I’m not here to make deals.’ The man raised the butt of the AK to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. ‘I’m here to kill you, Hudson Brand.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you pulled the trigger? You think I came all this way to look for a plane that’s been missing in the desert for thirty years? I’m not that stupid. I’ve known where it is for a long time.’

  The man licked his thin lips with serpent-like speed. ‘Then why haven’t you found it sooner?’

  ‘You know what’s in it?’

  ‘I don’t care what the fuck’s in it, I’m going to kill you now.’ The man curled his finger through the trigger and started to squeeze.

  Matthew Allchurch screamed for mercy as the single shot split the burning afternoon air.

  Chapter 15

  Joao the baker emerged from the thornbushes, a .375 hunting rifle with telescopic sights gripped in his meaty hands.

  ‘Good shot,’ Brand said.

  ‘You know me, I never miss. How is your friend?’

  Brand had taken off his bush shirt and wrapped it tightly around Matthew Allchurch’s hand. ‘He’s probably in shock. Bastard shot off his little finger, but he’ll live.’

  ‘Don’t talk about me like I’m not conscious,’ Allchurch said. He tried to stand, using his good hand to lever himself up, but when he made it to his feet he started to sway.

  ‘Take it easy, Matt,’ Brand said, hooking an arm around him. ‘You’ve lost blood.’

  Joao nudged the body of the gunman with the toe of his desert boot. The heavy-calibre bullet from the hunting rifle had taken off the top of his head. Matthew Allchurch glanced briefly at the dead man and started to heave. ‘Easy,’ Brand said. ‘Joao, check that one for ID.’

  The Portuguese knelt and rifled through the dead man’s pockets. ‘Nothing. No wallet, no driver’s licence, not even a receipt for petrol. Also, nothing on the one you capped by the BMW.’

  ‘Professionals. Let’s get to the car – can we go in your bakkie? Matthew here needs a doctor.’

  ‘I know one, back in Outjo. We can go to my place; he’ll make a house call. You want to tell the cops what happened here?’

  Brand imagined the investigation, the delays, perhaps some time in a police lockup. ‘What do you think?’

  Joao stroked his long grey moustache. ‘I’m doing OK with the bakery, but I’ve got some history. I don’t want to get dragged into this.’ Joao led the way back to the road, with Hudson shouldering Matthew. When they reached Joao’s truck they lifted Matthew into the back and used a rolled tarpaulin as a cushion for him to lie against. Brand then went to the assassins’ BMW and torched it, the same way he had destroyed the Jeep. He didn’t want the local police to find any evidence of him in the car. They drove back to Outjo, leaving the twin pyres of the burning vehicles and the smoking remains of the grass fire which, fortunately, had not jumped the main road.

  *

  Sand blew across the road in front of Sonja but through the gritty curtain she began to make out the distant blue line of the Atlantic Ocean.

  The backside of Swakopmund revealed itself first, an industrial estate, filling stations and vehicle workshops. Somewhere out here in the desert, she knew, were mass graves of Herero and Nama people who had died in the Swakopmund concentration camp during the independence war against the Germans. Emma was trying to uncover more grisly evidence of that time. Sonja knew that the desert winds often exposed bones and the ragged remains of clothing.

  As Sonja drove closer to the coast, passing first through a new extension of housing along the Swakop River that hadn’t existed when she was last there, the trappings of the modern world gave way to the Germanic orderliness of the seaside resort town. Swakopmund was a perfectly preserved little piece of Bavaria perched incongruously on a desolate coast of Africa. In a colonial anomaly the British had taken possession of Walvis Bay thirty kilometres to the south, the best deep-water port on the Atlantic coast and a chunk of land around it, leaving the German administration to develop Swakopmund, a poor second choice, as its prime sea port. Swakopmund almost became redundant, however, when the British took over South West Africa during the First World War, but reinvented itself as a seaside holiday resort after the second.

  The town centre and the waterfront had retained its original German colonial feel, unchanged since the brief period when Kaiser Wilhelm owned this little piece of Africa. Its street layout and earliest buildings had been designed in Germany and all of the materials shipped across the ocean and the town assembled, almost in kit form. Sonja’s aunt, Ursula Schmidt, had a place on the beach where Sonja and her family used to visit once a year.

  Sonja remembered swimming in the Atlantic, still cold even in summer, while her mother lay on the sand under an umbrella reading a book. Her father would drive north along the coast o
n day-long fishing trips and arrive home as red as a boiled lobster, reeking of beer and schnapps, but proudly holding aloft a dead fish, dripping blood.

  Sonja took a slow drive around town, and found it little changed from her childhood memories. The stately old hotels with their steep-pitched roofs, the Lutheran church, and the railway station – now also a hotel – were preserved and freshly painted, and the odd German street name had even survived. Some of the merchandise in the storefronts had moved with the times; there were African curio shops that would never have been seen when she was a child, and boutiques full of designer safari gear, but there were still the familiar cafes and pubs.

  Sonja pulled up outside a bottle store, went in and selected a sixpack of Windhoek Lager dumpies. She put the green bottles on the counter and greeted the woman at the cash register in German. She replied in the same language. German-style beer, and still the language of a colonial power vanquished more than a century earlier. Her country was bizarre, yet beautiful.

  She walked down the street, carrying the beers in a plastic bag and pausing now and then to look in the tourist shops. In a small arcade she came across a bookshop. She browsed for a while and picked up a copy of a book about the war against the Herero and the Nama. When she was a child her teachers had taught her that the Germans had brought civilisation, education and health care to South West Africa, not concentration camps, forced labour and summary executions. She placed the book back on the shelf, then picked it up again and paid for it.

  Sonja walked out into the sunshine. The wind was brisk and chilly, but the sky was endless African blue. It could change in minutes, she knew; and every evening a cold, wet blanket of fog rolled in off the Atlantic and sometimes hung around for days. If she was welcomed in Namibia, which she was sure she would not be, would she come back? It was a question to ponder over a few chilled beers, but first she would see if Tante Ursula was still in her house on the beach.

  *

  ‘You should rest,’ said the doctor, a Herero man with a shaved head and a beer belly that almost rivalled Joao’s.

  Matthew Allchurch looked from the doctor, who was now washing his hands in the sink of the kitchen in Joao’s house, not the most hygienic of surgeries, to Hudson Brand. ‘We need to keep moving.’

  Brand knew the physician was right, but Allchurch also had a point; lingering in one place would not help them find the missing aircraft and would also make them easier targets once replacements were sent to do the job the first two men had failed at.

  As they bid farewell to the doctor, Matthew, whose hand was now muffled in a bandage, had Hudson count out a couple of thousand rand from his wallet, which Hudson folded into the doctor’s palm.

  When the doctor had gone Matthew spoke up. ‘They must know you have some piece of information that helps narrow down where the Dakota could be. They must know that you wouldn’t have come all this way just to start randomly searching the desert. Did you mean it when you said you knew where Gareth’s plane was?’

  ‘I was bluffing,’ Brand said. ‘I know the coordinates for the rendezvous at sea and now that we know where Venter and I hit the deck, I can trace a possible flight path, assuming Gareth and the other pilot were able to get their bearings and get back on track.’

  Joao raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘You looking for a plane?’

  ‘Trust me, buddy, this is something you don’t want or need to know about,’ Brand said to him.

  Joao shrugged. ‘I’ve had enough trouble for one day. You can take my bakkie. I don’t need to come with you, if you don’t want me to save your lives again, but I’ll have to charge you rent.’

  *

  Sonja found her aunt’s house; it was hard to forget with its prime position and breathtaking view over the ocean. Ursula lived in upmarket Vineta, one of the earliest beachfront areas to be developed after Swakopmund reinvented itself from port to resort.

  The house was also easy to find because it was still painted the same shade of pink as Sonja remembered from thirty or more years ago. She parked the Land Rover and got out, wishing now she’d brought chocolates or flowers, something other than beer. She walked along a flagstone path bordered with hardy cacti and succulents. With the wind and the sand not much greenery survived in Swakopmund. Sonja knocked on the door.

  It opened a crack and a blue eye peered out at her. ‘Ja?’

  ‘Tante Ursula?’

  ‘I am Ursula, yes. Is that you . . . is that really you after all these years?’

  ‘Sonja.’

  The door opened wide and a diminutive woman with white hair piled in a messy bun looked up at her through funky red glasses with a beaded chain attached to them. Ursula wore a paint-spattered white cheesecloth smock. She looked like an older, shorter version of the kindly woman Sonja remembered from her childhood. The eyes still sparkled, though.

  ‘Of course I know who you are, Sonja. My goodness, though, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.’ Ursula reached up, wrapped her arms around Sonja and drew her face down for a kiss.

  Sonja pecked her aunt on the cheek, but stiffened a little in her embrace. She was not a hugger or a kisser, and even Sam had playfully mocked her reluctance to show affection in public. ‘Hello, Tante. It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Too long, too long, much too long. Come in, my dear.’

  Sonja followed her aunt through the doorway. While the house remained the same outside it was completely different inside. She remembered a place cluttered with photos of her aunt and uncle’s travels abroad, and souvenirs they’d brought home with them from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Her father had called his sister a hippy and Sonja had, in her earliest memories of her only other relatives, detected a faint resentment of her uncle from her father. Her uncle Udo, Ursula’s husband, had been a parks ranger and therefore exempt from military service; Sonja thought that was where her father’s disapproval stemmed from. Now the house made minimalist look like a junkyard. Everything was cool and white, cold almost.

  ‘The house has changed,’ Sonja said.

  ‘Ja. You move with the times, hey? In the old days, when you were a girl, this place was like a hippy house, you remember? It was full of clutter – Persian rugs, fans from the Orient, and a shisha pipe that your father used to accuse us of smoking marijuana in.’

  Sonja smiled. ‘Hippy was the first word I thought of when I remembered the place, and you.’

  Ursula laughed. ‘Well, like I said, we all move on. I like being uncluttered now. It gives me a sense of peace. All the other stuff kept reminding me of . . . well, it kept reminding me of the past.’

  ‘Of Uncle Udo?’ Sonja said, regretting her words immediately.

  Ursula smiled. ‘Yes, of Udo. I do remember him, every day, but to be surrounded by so much of our early life became almost suffocating in a way. I knew that life needed to carry on, and Udo would have felt the same way.’

  Sonja had a flashback to the last time she’d been in the house. Ursula hadn’t been smiling, she’d been howling, and her mother had sat with her on the old sofa, covered in batik-printed sarongs, trying to console her, while Hans had stood behind them, in uniform, one hand tentatively on his sister’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m thinking the same thing as you,’ Ursula said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘His funeral was the worst day of my life. When they came with the news it took a while to sink in. I was in shock. But when I saw his coffin lowered into the sand, that was when I finally realised I would never see him again, he would never hold me again.’

  Sonja looked out a big plate glass window, over the sea. ‘It’s a beautiful view.’ Through an open door she saw an adjoining room with a drop cloth on the floor and an easel with a canvas on it. ‘You’re still painting, I see.’

  Ursula touched her on the arm. ‘I read about your boyfriend, Sonja. I am so very sorry. I tried contacting you, through Facebook. Emma said she passed
on my condolences.’

  ‘Thank you. As you say, we must move on. Life doesn’t . . . stop.’

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’ Ursula said. ‘I’d offer you a beer or a glass of wine, but I’m out of both at the moment. I find it more enjoyable to drink when I’m socialising, rather than sitting at home by myself getting pissed.’

  Sonja laughed out loud at the incongruous profanity. ‘I’ve got a sixpack of oh-six-one in my truck.’

  Ursula beamed. 061 was the area code for Namibia’s capital. ‘Tafel would have been better, but even Windhoek Lager is better than tea.’

  Sonja walked out to the Land Rover, smiling again. She didn’t want to talk about Sam with her aunt, though she wondered, now, if she’d subconsciously sought out the old woman because that was probably the one thing they had in common, apart from the bond of blood. She got the beers and took them inside. Ursula had opened the French doors that led from the lounge onto a sunny deck. She opened a market umbrella and set out a tray of droëwors and biltong and two beer glasses.

  Ursula put four beers in the fridge and went back outside to where Sonja was leaning with two hands on the railing. Ursula poured them each a lager. ‘Prost,’ her aunt said.

  ‘To what shall we drink?’

  Ursula shrugged. ‘The future? Love? You tell me.’

  Sonja shrugged and took a sip. ‘My past doesn’t really bear talking about, and I honestly don’t know what my future will hold, Tante.’

  ‘What about Emma?’

  Sonja took another drink. ‘She’s all I have now. I was surprised to get your message from Emma about Sam. Thank you.’

  Ursula laughed. ‘Don’t be so surprised. Just because you never send me an email or a letter or a Christmas card doesn’t mean your daughter doesn’t. We’ve actually been in touch for a couple of years now.’

  ‘How did you find her?’

  ‘She found me. Remember that thing called Facebook, Sonja?’