Those Who Love Night

by Wessel Ebersohn

  There was no getting Chunga out of her mind. The protective way he had stepped between her and the people in the crowd, the way he had told her that they would search until they found the killer, the way he had hurried to tell her about Patel’s death—they all seemed like the acts of someone seeking to protect her.

  She thought about the CIO. Its role had always been to find and deal with enemies of the regime. She knew that a certain kind of man, who lusted after uninhibited power, was drawn to such organizations.

  And Jonas Chunga, where did he fit into that picture? Was he also drawn to power and did he serve it regardless of who possessed it and how it was used?

  Only now, after a day in which her mind had been filled with other matters, did she remember Robert. She took out her cell phone and dialed her home number. As before, her own voice urged her to leave a message. This time she felt no pang of anxiety, no moment of desperation.

  Without thinking, she dialed his office number and got one of the security guards. “Vuna Corporation,” a heavily accented African voice said.

  “Is Mr. Mokoapi still working?” she asked.

  “No, nobody’s working,” the guard said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Nobody’s working, nobody.”

  She dialed again without conscious purpose. This time it was the number of Yudel’s home. She heard the sound of a single short ring from the other side, then hung up. The whole thing has nothing to do with Yudel, she thought. What the hell would I say to him? And then there was Rosa. What would she think?

  She surprised herself by feeling comforted by the idea of speaking to Rosa and dialed the number again. Somehow, it was no surprise when it was Rosa who answered.

  “Rosa?”

  The older woman recognized her voice immediately. “Abigail, are you safe?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I don’t feel safe.”

  “How you feel is everything,” Rosa said. “You get on a plane and come home. Come home immediately.”

  “No, I can’t come, not now.”

  “And why not?”

  “The attorney who briefed me is dead. He was assassinated tonight.”

  “Oh.” Rosa needed a long silence to give herself the opportunity to find a way to respond.

  “Rosa?” Abigail asked. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, my dear. I am simply too horrified to say anything. I think you should speak to Yudel.”

  “No, I called to speak to you.”

  “But I’m just not the person for this.”

  “I just wanted to hear a friendly voice.”

  Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, the friendly voice became authoritative. “Abigail, you listen to me. This whole thing is not your business. You don’t belong in that country. You call a cab immediately and get to the airport. Then take the first flight out of there.”

  “I can’t, Rosa. I can’t do that now.”

  Abigail had barely hung up when her phone rang.

  “Abby?” This time it was Robert trying to contact her. She could hear voices and music in the background.

  Despite herself, she was pleased to hear him. “I tried to get hold of you—last night and earlier tonight. Where were you?”

  His response came too quickly and was much too vague. “I’ve been running all over the place. But how are you?”

  “But where were you? I phoned home and the office.”

  “You know how busy I’ve been, Abigail. I’ve had meetings all over the place.”

  She could hear the lie in his voice. Meetings with whom? she wanted to scream at him. And all over the place? Where is all over the place? Instead she asked, “Are you home now?”

  “No, I’m having dinner with Kgomotso. We’re going over his marketing plan.”

  Her watch told her it was almost two. Dinner with Kgomotso at two in the morning? Where in Pretoria did you find a restaurant that was still open at two? Can I speak to Kgomotso? she thought. Let me speak to him so that I know that he is the one you are with. “It’s very late for dinner,” she said.

  “Things are mad at the office. We’ve been working late. This was the only opportunity.”

  “Where are you having dinner?” She hated herself for asking.

  “Mandrea’s.”

  Mandrea’s? she thought. Dim lighting; booths that were pretty private. Without warning, the image of the blond PA rose in her mind. Almost immediately it was followed by one as vivid of Jonas Chunga, his strong arm outstretched to shield her from the crowd trying to get close to Krisj Patel’s body. “Is that a good place for a business meeting?” she asked. “The lighting is not good to read by.”

  “I know,” he said. “Perhaps it was a bad choice.”

  “I think so,” she said. Perhaps this conversation had been a poor choice, she thought. But say something to me that means something, she pleaded inwardly with Robert. Above all, say something to drive away the picture in my head of this man.

  “But your case. How’s your case going?”

  To Abigail, he was pretending an interest that he did not feel, or rather, his was an interest that served as a cover for himself. “The case is not going well,” she said. “The attorney briefing me was assassinated this evening.”

  “Jesus Christ, is this true?”

  And suddenly the newspaper man takes over, Abigail thought. “Of course it’s true.”

  “I’ll have a man on the next flight.”

  “Why don’t you come yourself?”

  “I’d love to, Abby. Really. There’s nothing I’d like better. But they know about me. Whoever I send will have to pretend to be a tourist. They won’t allow a journalist in.”

  “Won’t you try? Please try.”

  “They won’t allow me in. There’s no point in my trying. I’ll send a man they won’t have a record of.”

  “I wish you would try to come.”

  “I can’t, but tell me about it. Tell me what you can.”

  Before hanging up, she told him the little she knew. She also told him something about Krisj Patel, the poorly fitting clothes, the nervous mannerisms, and the determination to see justice done in his country. She also told him how she had inspected the body where it lay on the pavement.

  She lay back in bed and tried to think about her first full day in Harare. But all she could think about were the last few minutes. Robert would not even try to come. Nor did he once suggest that she should come home, despite what he had to know she was going through.

  Lying in bed, her gaze came to rest on the warring tiger and elephant under the window. The tiger’s upper lip was curled back, revealing canines that were disproportionately long and pointed. Nice to see a friendly face, she thought.

  20

  By morning The Herald already had the previous night’s story. “Government opponent slain,” the headline proclaimed. A sub-head expanded on the matter: “Well-known criminal elements suspected by police.”

  A caption under a photograph of a stern-looking Jonas Chunga read: “Director Jonas Chunga of the CIO has vowed to bring the criminals to justice.”

  The report quoted Chunga as saying that the fact that Patel was an enemy of the government made no difference to their determination to bring the guilty to justice. It went on to describe how he had been shot leaving his office. A man had been seen fleeing the scene by a night-watchman on duty near the place where Patel had been shot. The method used and clues left at the scene pointed to a well-known gang that had been operating in Harare for the last six months. The police were investigating.

  Abigail would have given anything to be part of the investigation into Patel’s death, but clearly that would not be possible. The authorities would not have allowed it under any circumstances, but in this matter, in which they were the most likely suspects, joining the investigation was beyond even the wildest possibility.

  By the time she had finished her breakfast, her cab, called by the hotel, had arrived. She was at the High Court building in ten
minutes. At the registrar’s counter, two female clerks were watched over by the same unsmiling photograph of the old dictator that the hotel had on display. They were in deep conversation. One of the clerks was saying how the administration was not fair and that the lawyers and judges got all the money and they got nothing. She looked resentfully at Abigail before getting up from her seat to come to the counter. “Good morning,” she said, scowling deeply.

  “Good morning,” Abigail said. “I have an urgent application here for a hearing.”

  “Urgent?” the woman asked. “Must it be urgent?”

  “Yes, it is urgent.”

  “What firm do you work for?”

  “Bukula and Associates,” Abigail said. It seemed to be the Zimbabwean way of giving your firm a name. The woman was screwing up her eyes as if weighing up Abigail’s statement. “I am Bukula.”

  “You’re the solicitor?”

  “I’m the barrister.”

  “Oh.” The eyes widened. “Sorry, miss.” It was clearly not usual for barristers to make the trip to court for this sort of thing. Abigail watched her take out a foolscap-size notebook from behind the counter and page slowly through it. The process clearly took some concentration. Eventually she looked up, keeping her place on the page with an index finger. “Two weeks,” she said.

  “That’s out of the question,” Abigail told her. “This is a habeas corpus matter. It is urgent. People are missing and have to be found.”

  The clerk went back to search through her notebook. “Friday, in two weeks,” she said. “That’s the best I can do.”

  “You have to do better.”

  “Friday, two weeks from today, is the best I can do. The register is full.”

  “Please try,” she said between gritted teeth.

  “I can’t try. The register, it’s full.”

  The woman who had remained seated spoke up in support of her colleague. “If the register is full, you can’t try.”

  * * *

  By the time she reached it, everything had changed at the scene of Patel’s death. The body had been removed hours before. Only a bloodstain in the gutter and a congealed remnant of his life’s blood between the paving stones remained of the night’s incident. The people of the area were going about their business as if nothing had happened. And, no doubt, many were unaware that their local attorney had been killed on that pavement just hours before.

  Nothing could be learned from staring at the paving stones where Krisj’s blood had run, or at the buildings on either side of the street. The night-watchman who had seen him die would probably be at home, asleep, before his next shift. His plastic chair was nowhere to be seen. Abigail wondered if, after this, he was still going to sit outside on summer evenings.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time she got back to the hotel. She was lying down on the bed, debating whether she should call Robert again, when the events of the last twenty-four hours and the little sleep of the night before overcame her and she slept.

  The knowledge that she would have to wait two weeks for the hearing and the thought of what might happen to Tony and the others in the meantime ran a tortured race through her dreams. She woke with the sun already low in the sky and the telephone ringing. Reaching for it, she knocked the handset onto the ground. By the time she had scrambled after it and gathered it off the floor, there was no sound from the receiver. Robert, she thought. It must be Robert.

  She put back the handset and stood next to the phone, waiting for Robert to call again. In just a few seconds it rang. “Robert?” she demanded of the phone.

  “Hello, Abigail.”

  She recognized Jonas Chunga’s voice immediately. “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “I believe you were at the murder scene today.”

  “That’s right.” Is that a crime in this damned country? she wondered, but resisted asking.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened and how determined I am to apprehend the guilty party.”

  “The newspaper says that gangsters did it,” Abigail told him. Explain that bit of nonsense to me, she thought. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “I’m sorry,” Abigail said. “Say that again.”

  “I don’t believe it was a criminal act. I believe it was a political crime.”

  Abigail sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. “What are you saying?”

  “I believe, as you do, that politics lay behind it.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s not a simple matter. Have dinner with me tomorrow night and we can discuss it at length.”

  “I beg your pardon? I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

  “I said, have dinner with me tomorrow night and we can discuss it.”

  “Isn’t there a Mrs. Chunga?”

  “No, there’s no Mrs. Chunga. There never has been. There was once a special lady, but there has never been a Mrs. Chunga.”

  Yes, Abigail thought. I want to do this. I want to do this more badly than I should want it. I need to do this. But what about Krisj? What would Krisj feel if he could see it? Perhaps he can.

  “Abigail, are you still there?”

  “Yes. I don’t think this is a good time, though.”

  “Are you thinking about Patel?”

  “Yes. And my case.”

  “I understand, but there is so little time to deal with the matter that brought you here. We can talk about that. And we can talk about what happened to Patel. I can share my suspicions with you.”

  “Just that?”

  “I also want you to understand more about my country.”

  What else? she thought. What else do you want from me?

  He answered without her ever framing the question. “And I want you to understand more about me.”

  Why that? she wondered, but she only said, “I see.”

  “Will you come, then?”

  He wanted her to understand about his country. And he wanted her to understand about himself. This was something real, perhaps something with meaning. He was so different to Robert. If he wanted her to understand anything, it might be why he was doing whatever it was he was doing with his blond PA.

  “Will you come?”

  What is it that I’m hearing in his voice? she asked herself. It sounds like the uncertainties of a teenage boy. Can it be that it took courage for this powerful man to ask me to dinner?

  “Will you?”

  “Yes, Jonas. I’ll come.”

  21

  The restaurant was in a country club on the outskirts of town. Jonas Chunga steered the Mercedes down a long avenue skirted by sporadic clusters of spreading acacias. The light was still good enough for Abigail to see the beautifully manicured golf course beyond the row of trees. The parking area in front of a low, colonial-style building held more expensive cars than she would have expected, even on a Saturday evening. Nor did she expect the white-jacketed and white-gloved waiters or the maître d’hôtel who came down the stairs to meet them, shaking hands and smiling at Chunga, then bowing to her.

  “Andrew is waiting for you, Director Chunga,” he said. “He has your table prepared.”

  If there was a difference between the scene that greeted them on entering the club’s restaurant and the one that would have greeted guests fifty years before, it was that now at least half the patrons were black. Most of them were members of the governing elite, dining tonight in the same setting that the colonial elite had once enjoyed. The other guests were probably all members of what remained of the business elite.

  The maître d’hôtel had addressed him as Director Chunga. Now Andrew, the waiter, led them to a table on a glassed-in terrace overlooking the golf course and shielded from the main section of the restaurant by a row of potted palms. “I think you’ve been here before, Director Chunga,” Abigail said.

  “Once or twice.” The waiter attempted to pull out the chair to seat her, but Chunga brushed him aside. He leaned protectively over her now as he
seated her. She remembered the same feeling of being protected when she had been crowded by the people at the scene of Patel’s death and how he had come between her and them.

  He settled into his chair, leaning back comfortably, his hands resting on the edge of the table. He was broad in the shoulders, still more powerful-looking than the image that had remained in her mind since their previous meetings. The gray in his hair was not only at the temples, but spread in little bright tufts across his head. When she had first met him, he had been, for her, the representative of something that horrified her. Now, by some strange metamorphosis, he had changed from being a symbol to just being a man.

  “This is a big surprise to me,” she said.

  “Even bigger to me.” The little smile around his mouth and in his eyes revealed genuine amusement. The voice was strong and secure. The hoarseness when she had first met him and the boyish uncertainty over the phone when he had invited her had both disappeared.

  “That you asked me. That’s what surprised me.”

  “And that you accepted. That was the biggest surprise of all.”

  Abigail was aware that she too was smiling. This was a man, a powerful man, an attractive man and he found her attractive. His attention was only with her.

  The waiter arrived with a bottle of white wine in an ice-bucket.

  “Do you make all the decisions tonight?” she asked. Damn, she thought—that sounded like a tease.

  “Not at all.”

  “You mean I am allowed to order my own dinner?”

  “May I be permitted a suggestion?”

  She heard her own soft laugh. “I thought there was a catch.”

  “There’s no catch. It’s just that I know the menu well.”

  “So which delicacy should I order?”

  The waiter, who had not gone far since bringing the wine, was back, order-book in hand. “May I suggest the seafood,” Chunga said. “The calamari heads as a starter, with the sole to follow. The fish is shipped in from Beira. It takes two or three days to get here, but it tastes almost as fresh as if it were caught this morning.”